This  book  is  L. 

APR   -^  ' 


THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 


BY 

EDWIN  L.  EARP 

Professor  of  Christian  Sociology,  Drew  Theological  Seminary 


2  33^^ 


NEW    YORK: 
CINCINNATI: 


EATON     &     MAINS 
JENNINGS  &  GRAHAM 


Copyright.  1911   by 
EATON  &  MAINS 


s3 


i  UN 


TO 

THE  MEMORY  OF  MY  MOTHER 

WHO  TAUGHT  ME  BY  HER   QUIET  CONFIDENCE  IN 

THE  INTEGRITY  OF  HUMAN  NATURE,  HER 

TRUST  IN  THE  LEADING  OF  THE 

HEAVENLY  FATHER,  AND  HER  UNTIRING 

ENERGY  IN  DOING  GOOD,  MY  FIRST 

LESSONS  IN  SOCL\L  ENGINEERING 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Introduction xi 

Why  We  Need  the  Social  Engineer xi 

All  Human  Life  Socialized  To-day  in  Consciousness  and 

Activity xiii 

The  Religious  Social  Engineer xviii 

PART  I 

The  Social  Engineer  in  the  Making 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I  The  Social  Consciousness 3 

Its  Meaning  and  Value 3 

Public  Opinion 6 

The  Social  Will 10 

Social  Control  and  Reform 12 

II  Social  Organization 14 

The  Reasons  for  Social  Organization 14 

The  Principles  of  Social  Organization 19 

The  Kinds  of  Social  Organization 21 

The  Relation  of  Social  Organizations  to  Each 

Other 23 

III  Social  Machinery  and  Social  Engineering  ....  26 

Social  Machinery  Defined 28 

Social  Engineering  Defined 33 

IV  Social  Classification,  Cleavage,  and  Conflict.  37 

Social  (classification — H  ow  Constituted 38 

Varieties  of  Social  Classification 41 

Factors  Which  Give  Social  Advantage 43 

Social  Cleavage  Defined 48 

Social  Barriers 50 

Social  Conflict 52 

Christian  Education  and  Society 55 

V  The  wSocial  Efficiency  of  the  Individual 59 

Fundamental  Questions 60 

Catttgorical  Answers 61 

Explanations 62 

An  Educational  Problem 70 

Social  Efficiency  Utilized 72 

What  the  Church  Can  Do 76 

V 


vi  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGS 

VI  The    Development    and    Education    of    the 

Social  Mtnd 81 

"What  We  Mean  by  the  Social  Mind 81 

The  Development  of  the  Social  Mind 84 

The  Education  of  the  Social  Mind 8S 

VII  Social  Progress 91 

A  Topic  of  Social  Education 91 

Ideas  of  Progress 92 

How  Progress  May  be  Measured 95 

Kinds  of  Progress  to  be  Measured 97 

Definitions  of  Progress 99 

\TII  Social  Studies 103 

Specific  Social  Studies 105 

A  Special  Commission  on  Social  Studies 106 

A  List  of  Specific  Problems 107 

IX  Friendship  as  a  Social  Force 112 

The  Art  of  Making  Friends 112 

Friendship  a  Paradox 114 

The  Basis  of  Friendship 115 

Characteristics  of  True  Friendship 118 

Christian  Friendship 120 

X  Social  Leadership 1 22 

In  the  Field  of  City  Government 123 

In  Legislation  and  Administration 12-4 

In  the  Field  of  Organized  Industry 125 

In  Organized  Charity 126 

XI  The  Church's  Peril 128 

What  Is  a  Peril? 128 

Failure  to  Attract  the  Multitudes 129 

The  Spiritual  Death  Rate 131 

Failure  to  Master  the  Modern  Social  Movement.  132 


PART  II 

The  Social  Engineer  at  Work 

XII  The  Meaning  of  Social  "Service 137 

Among  Church  Denominations 137 

Illustrations  of  Social  Service 139 

Individual  Social  Service 141 


CONTENTS  vii 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

XIII  How  TO  Work  the  Specific  Fields  op  Social 

Service 145 

How  to  Do — the  Modern  Question 145 

Methods  Develop  Readily  for  the  Busy  Man 146 

Specific  Fields 148 

The  Study  of  the  Fields 149 

The  Motive  for  our  Study 150 

The  Study  of  Causes 153 

XIV  Socialized  Charity 157 

What  Concerning  the  Poor? ICO 

What  Concerning  the  Afflicted? 164 

What  Concerning  the  Bad? 168 

XV  Team  Work  for  the  CoMMUNiTr 1 69 

How  to  Proceed 172 

1.  Team  Work  Against  Tuberculosis 172 

2.  For  Public  Health 174 

3.  Social-Service  Department  in  Hospitals 175 

4.  Against  Juvenile  Delinquency 176 

5.  For  Keeping  Boys  in  the  Church  During 
Adolescence 177 

6.  In  Church  Federation 178 

7.  In  Relating  the  Church  to  Industry 179 

XVT  The  City  Problem 181 

The  City  Not  a  Menace 1S2 

The  Fact  of  Congestion 183 

The  Results  of  Congestion 186 

The  Causes  of  Congestion 187 

The  Relief  of  Congestion 190 

XVII  Preventive  Social   Engineering 194 

Prevention  in  the  Medical  Profession 194 

Prevention  of  Germinal  Diseases 195 

Prevention  of  Drunkenness 198 

Preventive  Criminologj' 201 

Preventive  Work  for  Defectives 203 

Preventive  Work  Against  Pauperism 204 

XVIII  Preventive  Salvation 206 

WTiat  Has  Led  to  Emphasis  on  this  Subject. . . .  207 

The  Value  of  Prevention 209 

The  Method  in  Preventive  Salvation 210 

Guarding  the  Sources  of  Life 212 

Preventive  Salvation  Not  Negative 213 

Preventive  Salvation  Educational 215 


viii  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

XIX  Social  Sinking  and  Social  Salvation 218 

Definition 218 

The  Social  Perspective  of  Sin 221 

Society  May  Sin  Against  the  Individual 225 

Society  May  Sin  Against  the  Group 227 

Social  Salvation 228 

The  Social  Factors  in  Salvation 228 

What  Can  the  Church  Do?. 235 

XX  The  Church  and  the  Workingman 238 

What  the  Subject  Imphes 238 

The    Church's    Present    Attitude    toward     the 

Labor  Movement 241 

How  Can  the  Church  Help  the  Labor  Movement?  244 
What  Can  the  Labor  Movement  Do  to  Help  the 

Church? 249 

XXI  The  Social  Settlement 251 

Carrying  the  Church  to  the  People 252 

The  Integrity  of  Human  Nature 255 

The  Ministry  of  Personality 255 

What  Can  the  Church  Do? 258 

/*          XXII  The  Social  Causes  of  the  Boy  Problem 262 

We  Have  a  Boy  Problem 262 

Family  Neglect  a  Social  Cause 265 

Community  Neglect 268 

Church  Neglect  a  Social  Cause 269 

Preventive  Salvation  the  Solution 271 

XXIII  The  Social  Causes  of  the  Spiritual  Death 

Rate 273 

The  Popular  Use  of  the  Term 273 

Neglect  of  Childhood  275 

Neglect  to  Organize  Adult  Members 278 

Other  Causes  Named 281 

XXIV  Conservation  op  Christian  Resources 283 

The  Facts  in  the  Case 285 

What  Shall  We  Do? 293 

XXV  The  Social  Emphasis  in  Modern  Education  . . .  297 

Why  We  Need  this  Emphasis 300 

Bibliography 309 

Index 315 


PREFACE 

In  presenting  this  work  to  the  reading  public 
under  the  given  title,  ''The  Social  Engineer," 
I  am  fully  conscious  of  its  limitations  with  re- 
spect to  the  whole  field  of  social  service  which 
has  taken  on  technical  forms  in  industry,  in  re- 
ligion, in  philanthropy,  in  medical  practice,  and 
in  the  ever-increasing  fields  of  charities  and  cor- 
rection within  a  very  recent  period.  Yet  I  am 
quite  sure  that  the  subjects  treated  in  the  first 
part  contain  many  of  the  essentials  which  any 
man  should  know  before  choosing  social  en- 
gineering as  a  lifework ;  and  in  the  second  part 
I  have  endeavored  to  point  out  some  of  the  spe- 
cific social  tasks  and  to  indicate  some  of  the 
methods  which  may  be  of  practical  interest  to 
all  who  feel  the  need  of  doing  the  things  that 
count  for  most  in  the  betterment  of  human 
society.  We  are  conscious  of  the  fact  that  to- 
daj^  the  greatest  waste  of  time  and  resources  is 
not  in  lack  of  machinery  or  of  men,  or  of  knowl- 
edge of  the  forces  available  for  achievement, 
but,  rather,  in  the  lack  of  men  who  can  keep 
others  at  work  with  the  machinery,  and  in  re- 
lation to  all  the  forces  available,  without  so- 
cial friction. 

The  social  engineer  is  meeting  this  need  in 


X  PEEFACE 

modern  society,  and  I  shall  feel  gratified  if  in 
this  volume  I  may  have  shown  what  he  is  in  the 
making,  and  how  he  does  his  work  in  the  fields 
of  opportunity.  As  one  deeply  interested  in  the 
social  tasks  of  the  modern  Church,  and  from 
the  viewpoint  of  one  engaged  in  teaching  young 
men  who  are  to  become  leaders  in  organizing 
the  Church  membership  in  performing  these 
tasks,  the  writer  has  placed  especial  emphasis 
upon  religious  social  engineering,  while  not 
neglecting  to  give  the  widest  scope  to  the  work 
of  the  social  engineer  in  every  i:)hase  of  social 
organization  for  the  elevation  of  humanity. 

The  purpose  of  this  book  is  to  meet  a  felt 
need  now  being  given  intelligent  expression  by 
men's  clubs,  brotherhoods,  Bible  classes.  Young 
Men's  Christian  Association  classes,  and  other 
organizations  with  philanthropic  motives,  for 
a  text-book  on  social  studies  and  actual  social 
service.  It  is  hoped  that  it  will  not  only  serve 
a  demand  of  the  busy  pastor  in  the  modern  so- 
cialized ministry  of  the  Church  to  the  com- 
munity, but  that  it  also  may  be  of  practical  in- 
terest to  the  general  public. 

Edwin  L.  Earp. 

Drew  Theological  Seminary,  Madison,  N.  J. 


INTRODUCTION 
Why  We  Need  the  Social  Engineer 

There  never  has  been  a  time  like  the  pres- 
ent when  the  social  class-consciousness  was  so 
highly  developed.  In  all  current  literature  we 
read  the  products  of  this  class-consciousness  in 
discussions  of  socialism,  capitalism,  trades- 
unionism,  social  democracy,  class  conflict,  race 
antagonism,  social  classes,  woman  and  child 
labor,  congestion  of  population,  race  suicide, 
divorce,  gamblers  versus  the  people,  the  de- 
cisions of  courts  and  the  interests  of  a  class, 
Legislatures  versus  the  people,  the  saloon 
versus  prohibitionists,  revisionists  and  "stand- 
patters," and  a  thousand  or  more  distinctions 
of  a  smaller  group  differentiation. 

The  problem  of  the  unemployed  is  becoming 
acute  in  most  of  the  great  cities  of  the  world, 
and  the  task  of  Sisyphus  must  be  every  year 
repeated  in  making  up  the  budget  for  the  vic- 
tims of  poverty.  Tlie  problem  of  congested 
quarters  of  the  cities  with  the  attendant  misery 
is  disheartening  to  the  most  optimistic  social 
workers  in  this  field,  and  they  begin  to  ask  if 
there  is  not  something  fundamentally  wrong 
with  our  economic  system  that  permits  these 
conditions  to  exist. 


xii  INTEODUCTION 

Organized  labor  and  organized  capital,  work- 
ers and  employers,  are  often  in  conflict,  involv- 
ing loss  and  suffering  to  both,  and  also  to  the 
public,  which  is  dependent  upon  them  for  all 
it  needs  and  uses  in  the  complex  industrial  and 
commercial  life  of  modem  times. 

Again  we  find  the  opportuneness  of  this 
subject  illustrated  from  the  fact  that  there  are 
so  many  organizations  being  formed  in  our 
cities  and  industrial  centers  to-day  for  the  pur- 
pose of  civic  betterment,  community  welfare, 
and  the  bettering  of  the  conditions  under  which 
men  and  women  labor.  Social  settlements  and 
institutional  church  work  carried  on  by  the  so- 
cialized church  organizations  furnish  splendid 
opportunities  for  our  young  people  to  engage 
in  forms  of  social  service,  and  afford  channels 
of  work  where  the  social  energies  of  the  youth 
may  be  released  for  life-saving  and  life-im- 
provement. Mam''  of  these  social  organizations, 
as  now  conducted,  are  not  distinctively  Chris- 
tian, but  could  be  easily  made  so  if  the  better 
trained  of  our  young  men  and  women  would 
join  them,  and  by  the  force  of  Christian  motive 
and  character  dominate  their  policies  and  ac- 
tivities. 

Questions  of  sanitation  and  health  and  the 
social  character  of  disease  were  never  so  em- 
phasized before  in  our  growing  city  popula- 
tions.    In  one  school  last  year  in  one  of  our 


INTRODUCTION  xiii 

growing  industrial  centers  during  the  first  three 
days  of  the  fall  term,  under  the  direction  of  a 
trained  nurse  as  medical  inspector,  eighty-five 
children  were  sent  home  because  their  condi- 
tion was  a  menace  to  the  health  of  the  hundreds 
of  their  neighbors'  children  present  in  the 
building;  one  case  was  that  of  scarlet  fever. 

Hospitals  are  to-day  organizing,  in  connec- 
tion with  their  clinical  work  for  outdoor  pa- 
tients, and  even  for  those  receiving  treatment 
in  the  wards,  departments  of  social  service  for 
the  purpose  of  helping  the  patients  in  their 
home  environment,  and  of  ministering  to  their 
social  needs  in  the  conditions  causal  to  their 
real  trouble.  Men  and  women  of  broad  charity 
and  thorough  training  are  needed  who  can  take 
up  the  difficult  task  that  is  yet  to  be  done  after 
the  physician  has  dismissed  the  case;  and  fre- 
quently they  must  call  upon  the  organizations 
of  the  Church  to  look  after  those  cases  which 
require  social  treatment. 

All  human  life  to-day  is  being  socialized  in 
consciousness  and  in  activity.  In  considering 
its  ethical  phase  it  should  be  understood  at  the 
outset  that  the  modern  movement  for  social 
service  does  not  differ  from  other  religious 
movements  for  moral  reform  so  much  in  aim 
as  in  method  or  points  of  emphasis.  It  is  a 
movement  that  involves  organization  of  indi- 
A'iduals,  cooperation  and  federation  of  groups 


xiv  INTKODUCTION 

in  mass-effort  for  the  accomplishment  of  social 
tasks.  It  recognizes  that  the  powers  of  evil  to- 
day are  socially  organized,  and  therefore  the 
salvation  of  society  involves  social  methods 
and  machinery  in  order  to  overthrow  the  or- 
ganized powers  of  evil.  It  recognizes  that  to- 
day it  is  possible  to  "sin  by  syndicate,"  and 
therefore  our  methods  of  salvation  must  be  so- 
cialized. It  is  a  movement  to  regenerate  en- 
vironment so  that  the  spiritual  life  of  the  in- 
dividual may  have  the  best  chance  to  function 
and  prove  its  quality  by  fruitage. 

While  not  ignoring  the  value  of  remedial 
agencies,  it  places  emphasis  on  the  preventive 
methods  in  moral  reform.  It  seeks  to  better 
the  conditions  of  living  men  not  so  much  by 
prohibiting  evils  themselves  as  by  the  releasing 
of  energies  that  will  keep  the  life  of  the  indi- 
vidual in  society  normal. 

It  means  that  the  social  consciousness  of  so- 
ciety has  been  aroused  to  the  necessity  of  doing 
something  heroic  to  regenerate  the  changing  so- 
cial order  by  bettering  the  conditions  of  living 
where  the  life  struggle  and  class  conflict  are 
most  threatening  to  the  whole  structure  of 
Christian  civilization;  a  serious  search  for  a 
social  antitoxin  that  will  destroy  the  toxic 
effects  of  social  sinning  in  the  body  social;  an 
earnest  attempt  to  apply  the  preventive  meas- 
ures of  the  gospel  to  the  problem  of  sin  as  well 


INTRODUCTION  xv 

as  the  redemptive  agencies  of  the  Word  of 
God.  It  means  organization  to  discover  the 
causes  of  social  ills  and  an  organized  effort  to 
destroy  sin  at  its  source.  It  means  an  earnest 
endeavor  to  save  human  life  by  regenerating 
and  transforming  the  environment  that  pollutes 
and  destroys  the  springs  of  human  life.  It  is 
our  endeavor  not  so  much  to  save  from  the  slum 
as  it  is  a  determination  to  remove  the  slum; 
not  alone  the  screening  of  our  children  from 
infectious  mosquitoes,  but  the  filling  up  of  the 
pools  where  they  breed. 

Social  engineering  means  not  merely  chari- 
ties and  philanthropies  that  care  for  the  vic- 
tims of  vice  and  poverty,  but  also  intelligent 
organized  effort  to  eliminate  the  causes  that 
make  these  philanthropies  necessary,  and  it 
means  also  an  attempt  at  a  readjustment  of  our 
economic  and  industrial  system  by  wise  states- 
manship through  social  control,  so  that  the 
profits  of  social  production  may  be  more  equi- 
tably distributed  to  all  the  legitimate  factors  in 
society. 

In  one  age  the  master  of  the  household  could 
say  to  the  men  involuntarily  idle,  waiting  in  the 
market  place  for  a  chance  to  work,  "Go  work 
in  my  vineyard";  but  in  our  organized  indus- 
trial age  the  captain  of  industry  may  send  a 
message  from  his  touring  car  in  some  remote 
village  of  the  Alps  through  a  cable  company  of 


xvi  INTRODUCTION 

wliicli  he  may  be  a  director  to  some  one  in  au- 
thority in  ' '  the  system, ' '  saying  to  this  man,  or 
group  of  men,  "Go  work  in  the  mines,  the 
smelters,  the  shops,  the  mills,"  or  in  any  other 
of  the  many  activities  in  the  complex  organized 
process  of  getting  the  fruits  of  his  vineyards 
or  fields  in  place  and  form  for  the  use  of  the 
consumer  in  a  world  market,  as  the  case  may 
be. 

We  see  the  same  fact  in  our  church  work; 
in  one  age  it  is  the  Master's  command  for  the 
seventy  to  go  out  into  the  cities  and  villages 
by  twos  or  for  the  one  hundred  and  twenty  to 
go  by  ones  to  preach  the  good  tidings  of  the 
kingdom;  but  to-day  his  command  may  mean 
the  organization  of  societies,  the  establishment 
of  institutions,  the  building  of  vast  structures, 
the  management  of  world-wide  enterprises  for 
doing  the  work  of  redeeming  men  and  regen- 
erating human  society. 

In  the  industrial  and  commercial  world  we 
have  learned  that  cooperation  is  better  than 
destructive  competition,  therefore  we  have  cor- 
porations and  mergers  for  conducting  the  great 
businesses  of  society  with  the  maximum  of  effi^ 
ciency  and  with  the  minimum  of  waste  and  cost 
in  the  process  of  production  and  distribution. 
So  in  the  religious  activities  of  the  world  we 
are  learning  that  federation  and  cooperation 
are    better    than    denominational    self-interest 


INTRODUCTION  xvii 

and  waste  of  economic  resources  and  men  in 
duplicating  of  work  and  overlapping  of  ter- 
ritory. Therefore  the  great  religious  denomi- 
nations and  their  subordinate  organizations 
within  them  are  becoming  socially  conscious  of 
how,  by  federative  action,  they  may  together 
carry  out  the  social  program  of  Jesus  and  real- 
ize the  vision  of  the  prophets  and  the  social 
ideal  of  the  apostle  Paul. 

One  of  the  distinguishing  characteristics  of 
the  modern  social  movement  is  that  it  seeks 
not  to  get  all  men  to  think  alike,  or  to  hold  the 
same  opinions  about  any  given  plan  or  project 
of  social  reform,  but  its  chief  aim  is  to  get  men 
to  act  together  in  an  organized  way  for  the  de- 
struction of  evils  in  society  and  the  creation  of 
good  in  the  community.  As  a  result,  we  find 
the  most  fruitful  examples  of  social  unity  to- 
day in  the  field  of  service  and  not  in  the  fields 
of  controversy.  We  have  no  time  for  burning 
heretics  in  our  haste  to  brand  sinners  in  high 
iplaces.  We  see  religious  denominations  that 
differ  widely  in  theological  discussions  working 
shoulder  to  shoulder  in  the  battle  with  the  slum 
and  in  the  task  of  evangelizing  the  world  in  this 
generation. 

This,  then,  is  our  point  of  view:  we  have 
reached  a  stage  in  the  evolution  and  develop- 
ment of  methods  in  social  engineering  where 
we  see  the  need  of  emphasis  upon  the  task  of 


xviii  INTKODUCTION 

realizing  in  social  conduct  the  moral  and  re- 
ligious ideals  we  have  been  teaching  the  indi- 
vidual who  lives  in  a  real  world  that  confronts 
him  so  often  in  the  Christian  race  with  a  social 
handicap. 

It  is  not  religion  that  becomes  insipid  and 
unattractive  to  so  many  young  men  and  women 
in  our  day,  but  rather  more  often  our  inapt, 
unrelated,  sometimes  erroneous,  though  usually 
well-meaning  interpretations  of  the  historic 
facts  about  it,  or  our  blundering  methods  in 
carrying  out  our  problem. 

The  Eeligious  Social  Engineer 

The  religious  social  engineer  is  one  who  can 
help  the  religious  leader  to  establish  a  desired 
working  force  in  any  field  of  need,  and  keep  it 
in  sympathetic  cooperation  with  all  other  forces 
working  for  the  establishment  of  the  kingdom 
of  God  on  earth  in  harmony  with  the  program 
and  leadership  of  Jesus  Christ. 

It  would  be  a  calamity  for  a  hungry  house- 
hold if  the  harvest  hands  in  getting  ready  for 
their  work  should  plunge  into  acrimonious  dis- 
cussion over  the  relative  merits  of  machinery 
and  methods,  and  even  kill  one  another  with 
their  sickles,  or  play  Juggernaut  with  their 
reapers  and  forget  all  about  the  harvest  field, 
the  threshing,  and  the  grist. 

Before  the  Christian  minister  to-day  lies  the 


INTKODUCTION  xix 

great  world  field  of  teeming,  throbbing,  strug- 
gling human  population,  a  vast  network  of 
organizations  of  human  beings  grouped  in  ac- 
cordance with  the  natural  laws  and  forces  that 
are  at  work  through  heredity  and  environment, 
and  also  the  social  integration  and  differentia- 
tion of  these  groups  into  voluntary  and  pur- 
posive associations,  in  response  to  psychic 
forces  that  have  been  aroused  by  an  intelligent 
response  to  human  needs  immediately  felt  or 
more  remotely  discerned.  His  task  is  none 
other  than  the  redeeming  of  the  world,  the  re- 
generating of  human  society.  He  is  not  only  to 
proclaim,  as  did  John  the  Baptist,  that  the  king- 
dom of  heaven  is  at  hand,  but  also,  with  the 
daring  and  confidence  of  his  Lord,  he  is  to  say 
not  only  ''To-day  is  this  program  being  fulfilled 
in  your  ears,"  but  is  to  back  it  up  by  sacrifice 
in  intelligent  service,  and  compel  the  multitudes 
among  whom  he  has  done  his  work  to  say,  * '  This 
day  is  his  program  being  carried  out  in  our 
town."  His  work  is  not  done  when  he  has 
preached  his  message  to  the  individual  alone, 
but  it  reaches  further  and  includes  the  regenera- 
tion of  the  social  order,  so  that  the  individual 
may  find  it  easier  to  keep  saved.  To  succeed 
in  this  field  to-day  he  must  not  only  understand 
the  principles  of  social  engineering,  but  he  must 
have  as  his  assistant  the  social  engineer. 

The  man  at  the  head  of  a  great  construction 


XX  INTRODUCTION 

company  is  just  as  much  interested  in  securing 
a  practical  engineer  to  keep  his  men  at  work 
in  the  right  place  and  at  the  right  time  as  he  is 
in  securing  men  who  can  manage  the  technique 
of  planning  a  structure  and  of  judging  mate- 
rials. In  church  work  to-day  we  often  have 
good  leaders  who  know  the  technique  of  organi- 
zation; we  have  men  who  can  finance  church 
enterprises;  but  we  often  fail  of  the  best  re- 
sults in  a  community  full  of  opportunities  be- 
cause we  lack  the  practical  social  engineers  who 
can  organize  and  keep  at  work  the  masses  of 
men  and  women  within  the  membership  of  our 
churches  and  Sunday  schools.  You  sometimes 
hear  of  friction  between  groups  of  persons  in 
carrying  out  some  great  enterprise  in  church 
work.  Why  is  this?  It  is  often  because  there 
is  no  one  to  do  the  work  of  a  practical  social 
engineer,  who  knows  how  to  keep  everybody  at 
work  in  such  an  organized  way  that  there  will 
be  no  friction  or  interference  between  groups. 

It  was  during  the  Boxer  rebellion  in  China, 
ten  years  ago,  that  a  Methodist  preacher  who 
had  studied  practical  engineering  in  his  years 
of  preparation  saved  the  day  for  civilization 
and  the  Christian  Church  in  that  great  empire. 
So  we  should  insist  that  the  men  who  go  out 
from  our  colleges  and  theological  seminaries 
shall  have  that  acquaintance  with  practical  so- 
cial organization  and  social  engineering  which 


INTRODUCTION  xxi 

in  any  emergency  of  the  social  struggle  will 
enable  them  to  engineer  all  available  forces  in 
the  defense  of  the  faith. 

We  want  men  to  go  out  from  our  halls  of 
Christian  learning  with  hearts  warm  with  the 
love  of  Jesus  for  the  world,  and  with  heads 
clear  with  Paul's  vision  of  the  kingdom;  men 
who  are  wise  enough,  broad  enough,  and  far- 
seeing  enough  to  measure  all  the  difficulties  and 
relate  themselves  to  the  forces  available  for 
conquest;  men  with  faith  enough  in  their  re- 
sources to  say,  *'We  are  well  able  to  possess 
the  land";  men  who  are  strong  and  pure 
enough  to  utilize  even  the  help  of  a  Rahab  in 
securing  information  regarding  the  character 
of  the  modern  Jerichos.  Sometimes  even  good 
men  are  so  afraid  of  soiling  their  garments  of 
ceremonialism  that  they  allow  the  enemies  of 
decent  society  to  maintain  not  only  dirty,  dis- 
eased tenements,  and  contaminated  milk,  and 
an  impure  water  supply,  but  also  to  pollute  the 
innocent  of  our  churches  and  homes  by  their 
unholy  institutions  open  seven  days  in  the  week. 
Yes,  we  even  let  them  elect  sometimes  aldermen 
to  hold  a  deciding  vote  as  to  how  our  reforms 
shall  be  allowed  to  proceed,  if  at  all. 

We  need  men  for  these  social  tasks  who  are 
seeking  a  place  to  serve  and  not  merely  a  place 
of  honor.  In  all  our  religious  organized  effort 
in  the  past  we  have  often  suffered  defeat  be- 


xxii  INTRODUCTION 

cause  we  have  allowed  men  to  be  in  office  who 
wanted  the  place  rather  than  a  chance  to  serve 
with  efficiency. 

Again,  we  need  men  of  knowledge.  Piety  is 
an  indispensable  asset,  but  without  knowledge 
it  can  be  almost  as  inefficient  in  securing  re- 
sults as  indifference.  AVe  need  men  who  know 
how  to  find  the  sources  of  evil  and  hit  them 
hard  at  the  strategic  time  and  place,  rather 
than  waste  their  energies  upon  nonessentials 
which  belong  to  the  categorj^  of  diversions ;  men 
who  will  not  be  diverted  from  the  source  of  the 
fire  in  the  basement  by  the  sight  of  smoke  es- 
caping from  the  roof  of  the  building.  We  need 
patient  men;  not  that  kind  of  patience  which 
cries,  *'0  Lord,  how  long?"  and  does  nothing; 
but  that  kind  which  after  putting  the  rascals 
out  of  office  is  willing  to  pay  the  extra  cost  of 
keeping  them  out  until  the  new  regime  has  vin- 
dicated its  right  to  remain  in  the  confidence  of 
all  decent  people  and  receive  their  support. 

We  must,  therefore,  develop  a  new  tyj^e  of 
minister  or  religious  worker,  a  religious  social 
engineer,  for  the  work  of  the  Sunday  school, 
who  understands  the  psychology  of  the  adoles- 
cent and  knows  the  social  forces  which  domi- 
nate the  thinking  and  conduct  of  young  people ; 
a  social  engineer  for  the  men  of  the  church  who 
have  no  work  to  do  in  many  cases  worthy  of  a 
man  of  strength,  one  who  knows  the  city  and 


INTRODUCTION  xxiii 

its  needs  and  can  relate  the  men  and  women  of 
the  church  and  the  community  to  the  civic  life 
of  the  town  or  city.  Another  type  of  social  en- 
gineer should  be  developed  for  the  country 
problem,  who  will  be  able  to  direct  the  social 
forces  of  a  whole  county  and  relate  them  to  the 
best  interests  of  the  State  and  nation.  Still 
another  type  of  engineer  is  needed  who  will  be 
able  to  deal  in  an  intelligent  way  with  the  for- 
eigners in  the  villages  and  towns  and  the  great 
colonies  of  them  in  our  large  cities.  In  other 
words,  we  need  a  type  of  man  who  knows  the 
value  of  social  machinery,  and  how  to  run  it, 
and  is  willing  to  stay  on  the  job. 


PART  I 

THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER  IN  THE 
MAKING 


CHAPTER  I 

2.  3  3  ^  -2- 
THE  SOCIAL  CONSCIOUSNESS 

If  the  social  engineer  is  to  become  an  im- 
jDortant  factor  in  our  modern  civilization,  it 
will  be  necessary  for  him  to  develop  in  himself 
the  social  consciousness  before  he  can  hope  to 
succeed  in  molding  the  opinions  of  others  in  the 
performance  of  social  tasks.  It  is,  therefore, 
our  purpose  in  this  chapter  to  point  out  some- 
what in  detail  the  function  of  the  social  con- 
sciousness in  the  doing  of  social  service.  This 
will  involve  a  discussion  of  its  meaning,  its  re- 
lation to  public  opinion,  the  social  will,  the  work 
of  social  reform,  and  the  establishment  of  per- 
manent social  control. 

Its  Meaning  and  Value 

Now,  we  all  know  that  we  live  in  many  re- 
lations of  which  we  are  never  conscious  except 
as  they  are  pointed  out  to  us,  and  in  others  of 
which  we  are  conscious  only  at  times.  In  fact, 
the  mind  is  made  up  of  a  body  of  knowledge,  a 
mere  fragment  of  which  we  hold  in  conscious- 
ness at  any  one  time,  and  it  is  by  the  aid  of  the 
memory,  or  of  some  other  person  repeating  to 
us  the  facts,  that  we  bring  these  fragments  of 

3 


4  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

knowledge  into  consciousness.  So  with  the 
mind  of  the  community.  Many  things  are  go- 
ing on  of  which  the  community  is  not  aware, 
whether  for  good  or  ill,  and  these  facts  must 
first  come  into  the  consciousness  of  society  be- 
fore anything  will  be  attempted  in  the  line  of 
social  service  for  the  betterment  and  welfare  of 
the  community.  The  great  task  in  social  en- 
gineering is  to  keep  society  conscious  of  its 
needs  until  it  can  be  aroused  to  do  what  ought 
to  be  done  to  better  the  conditions  of  which  it 
is  aware,  or  to  change  the  social  habits  and  cus- 
toms of  a  people  so  that  evil  may  be  avoided  or 
good  achieved. 

We  often  make  use  of  an  ''Irish  bull"  in  the 
expression,  ''One  never  takes  advice  until  it  is 
too  late  to  take  it."  The  reason  for  this  is 
plain.  The  one  giving  advice  seldom  has  it  in 
consciousness  until  the  tendencies  he  sees  in 
others  have  already  led  to  conditions  which 
awaken  it,  and  the  one  to  whom  it  is  given  sel- 
dom, if  ever,  brings  it  into  consciousness  until 
a  condition  is  reached  that  awakens  him  to  it, 
and  then  it  is  often  too  late  to  take  it,  for  that 
particular  case  at  least.  For  illustration :  here 
is  a  boy  who  becomes  conscious  that  he  has 
taken  cold  and  so  he  goes  to  his  mother  with  the 
fact.  Now,  it  is  not  likely  he  was  conscious  at 
the  time  of  any  indiscretion,  such  as  going  out 
without  his  rubbers,  talking  at  the  door  without 


THE  SOCIAL  CONSCIOUSNESS  5 

coat  or  hat  too  long  with  his  chum,  or  sitting  in 
a  draught  while  in  a  perspiration  after  play  at 
recess.  His  mother  may  have  warned  and  ad- 
vised him  concerning  all  these  points,  but  his 
trouble  was  in  not  having  them  in  consciousness 
at  the  proper  time  to  avoid  the  result.  So  in 
every  community  there  is  great  need  for  that 
kind  of  social  engineering  that  will  keep  the  in- 
dividuals and  the  groups,  as  well  as  society  at 
large,  conscious  of  what  is  necessary  to  do  to 
prevent  social  ills  as  well  as  of  what  may  be 
done  to  destroy  them  after  they  have  taken  root. 
The  greatest  service  of  the  life  guards  at  the 
seashore  is  warning  people  of  the  dangers  and 
keeping  people  from  going  out  too  far.  It  is 
only  incidentally  they  have  to  rescue  from 
drowning  some  foolish  one  who  has  not  taken 
heed  and  ventured  too  far  out. 

In  the  work  of  social  service  for  the  com- 
munity there  are  greater  need  and  more 
promising  results  in  the  sphere  of  keeping 
the  social  consciousness  of  the  people  awake 
to  the  modes  of  prevention  rather  than  to 
the  methods  of  rescue.  Our  resolutions  of 
indignation  on  the  discovery  of  conditions  of 
evil  in  a  community  will  mean  more  when 
we  have  done  more  public  service  to  pre- 
vent them.  As  Professor  Patten  has  well  said, 
''When  we  see  a  drunken  man  reeling  in  the 
street  we  talk  much  about  the  weakness  of  hu- 


C  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

man  nature,  and  not  enough  on  why  the  saloon 
remains  on  the  corner. '  '^ 

Social  consciousness,  whether  in  the  indi- 
vidual or  in  the  mind  of  the  group,  involves 
not  only  the  consciousness  of  the  presence  of 
others  but  the  idea  of  moral  obligation  in  those 
relations;  not  only  the  notion  of  how  others 
may  help  me,  but  also  how  I  may  help  others 
by  rightly  associating  myself  with  them  for  our 
mutual  good  and  well-being.  We  see,  then,  that 
there  is  nothing  mysterious  about  the  social 
consciousness,  but  that  it  is  a  familiar  fact  of 
ordinary  experience.  AYhat  we  need  to  under- 
stand is  its  relation  to  the  work  of  social  service 
and  social  organization.  In  the  history  of  all 
social  reform  there  must  first  take  place  the 
awakening  of  the  consciousness  of  need.  This 
in  its  organized  form  we  call  public  opinion,  in 
group  action  the  expression  of  the  social  will, 
and  in  the  changed  social  order  we  designate 
it  as  social  reform,  or  social  control. 

Public  OriNioisr 

It  is  not  only  necessary  to  have  present  in 
society  the  consciousness  of  social  needs,  but 
these  needs  must  be  intelligently  understood 
before  anything  is  likely  to  be  attempted  in  an 
organized  form  for  the  good  of  the  community. 
This  intelligent  understanding  of  social  needs 

1  "The  New  Basis  of  Civilization." 


THE  SOCIAL  CONSCIOUSNESS  7 

we  call  public  opinion.  Professor  Cooley  ex- 
presses the  idea  as  follows:  "We  may  find  so- 
cial consciousness  either  in  a  particular  mind 
or  as  a  cooperative  activity  of  many  minds. 
The  social  ideas  that  I  have  are  closely  con- 
nected with  those  that  other  people  have,  and 
act  and  react  upon  them  to  form  a  whole.  This 
gives  us  public  opinion,  in  the  broad  sense  of  a 
group  state  of  mind  of  which  the  group  is  more 
or  less  distinctly  aware.  The  unity  of  public 
opinion,  like  all  vital  unity,  is  not  one  of  uni- 
formity but  one  of  organization  or  interaction 
and  mutual  influence."^  Here,  it  seems  to  me, 
is  one  of  the  most  fruitful  fields  of  social  en- 
gineering for  our  Sunday  schools,  and  brother- 
hoods, and  kindred  organizations  of  young  peo- 
l^le,  as  well  as  for  the  public  congregation,  and 
that  is,  the  development  of  the  social  conscious- 
ness of  many  individual  minds  into  organized 
expressions  of  public  opinion. 

Public  opinion  is  not  possible  without  the 
means  and  agencies  of  intercommunication  of 
minds  with  similar  ideas.  A  distinguished  mis- 
sionary, returned  from  the  Philippine  Islands 
a  few  years  ago,  said :  *'In  the  Philippines  there 
is  no  public  opinion  because  there  is  no  way  of 
creating  it.  They  have  [then,  1905]  no  news- 
papers; and  if  they  had,  the  people  could  not 

1  See  Publications  of  American  Sociological  Society,  vol.  i,  1906, 
p.  101. 


8  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

read  tliem,  because  they  have  so  many  different 
languages  and  dialects,  and  there  are  few  in- 
telligent enough  to  read  if  they  could  get  them. 
In  this  country  you  buy  your  public  opinion  for 
two  cents  in  the  morning  and  one  cent  at  night. '  *■ 
He  meant  by  this  that  to  have  public  opinion 
that  will  respond  to  a  need  in  the  community  we 
must  have  the  means  of  communication.  The 
Sunday  school  is  a  significant  illustration,  be- 
cause we  have  in  our  organization  and  litera- 
ture the  means  of  performing  for  the  public 
this  most  important  social  service.  Of  course 
the  initiative  must  be  taken  by  the  minister,  su- 
perintendent, and  their  intelligent  and  efficient 
corps  of  teachers.  In  matters  of  civic  improve- 
ment such  a  movement  may  be  started  with  an 
adult  Bible  class,  or  a  brotherhood,  or  Epworth 
League,  Christian  Endeavor  Society,  or  some 
other  adult  organization  in  the  Church  com- 
munity. To  illustrate  how  public  opinion  may 
be  effectively  organized:  some  years  ago  a 
student  in  one  of  my  classes  in  the  university 
who  was  preaching  in  a  country  town  dis- 
covered that  there  existed  in  that  place  a  no- 
torious gambling  den  that  was  so  conducted  in 
connection  with  a  candy  shop  and  cigarette 
stand  that  many  of  the  boys  and  young  men 
were  being  corrupted  and  drawn  away  from 
the  Sunday  school  and  church.  Pie  asked  me 
what  he  should  do.    I  advised  him  to  organize  a 


THE  SOCIAL  CONSCIOUSNESS  9 

committee  of  trusty  men  to  investigate,  get 
facts  and  affidavits,  and,  after  finding  the  law 
applicable  to  such  facts,  to  present  them  to 
the  proper  authority  and  at  the  same  time  give 
the  facts  to  the  public,  preferably  through  the 
daily  press;  and  if  it  refused,  to  employ  the 
pulpit  and  platform  in  giving  the  facts  to  the 
public.  He  succeeded  in  a  short  time  in  ridding 
the  town  of  a  social  evil  by  organized  public 
opinion  that  the  people  as  individuals  had  been 
conscious  of  for  years,  but  had  never  before 
seriously  considered  removing  by  concerted 
action. 

By  using  the  International  Lessons  and  the 
publication  of  literature  on  the  same  themes  we 
have  done  a  splendid  service  for  church  unity 
and  Christian  federation  among  Protestant  de- 
nominations; and  by  the  adoption  of  such  de- 
partments of  social  service  in  the  Sunday  school 
literature  of  the  present  the  editors  have  taken 
a  wise  step  toward  making  possible  the  spread 
of  public  opinion  of  a  sane.  Christian  type  upon 
many  of  the  pressing  social  problems  of  the 
present,  such  as  child-labor,  divorce,  the  social 
evil  and  the  disastrous  line  of  social  diseases 
that  follow  in  its  wake,  the  improvement  of  the 
conditions  of  the  wage-workers,  the  menace 
of  congested  population  in  the  cities,  and  the 
betterment  of  life  conditions  in  the  rural  dis- 
tricts. 


10  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEEK 

The  Social  Will 

The  Hebrew  prophets  were  led  to  say,  * '  The 
people  are  destroyed  for  lack  of  knowledge," 
but  the  modern  prophet  can  change  that  a  little 
and  say,  ' '  The  people  are  destroyed  for  lack  of 
well-coordinated  social  action  in  matters  they 
already  know  full  well." 

*' Social  will  differs  from  public  opinion  only 
in  implying  a  more  continuous  and  effective 
guide  to  social  development."*  We  discover 
after  a  little  investigation  that  many  of  the  ills 
of  society  are  not  directly  willed  by  anybody, 
but  are  the  by-products  of  conduct  otherwise 
willed — for  example:  drunkenness,  social  dis- 
eases, accidents  in  industry,  the  slum,  depriva- 
tion and  suffering  of  neutrals  in  warfare,  etc. 
All  are  the  results  of  ignorance.  A  young  man 
is  killed  in  the  act  of  trying  to  stop  a  runaway 
horse,  not  because  of  any  bad  will,  but,  prob- 
ably, because  he  was  ignorant  of  the  method  of 
seizing  him  with  the  minimum  of  danger  and 
the  maximum  of  good  result.  A  man  greatly 
esteemed  by  his  firm,  and  of  great  value  to  the 
community  and  the  Church,  in  attempting  to 
catch  a  car  in  motion,  that  he  may  meet  an  ap- 
pointment, is  crushed  beneath  the  wheels.  Here 
is  an  ill  to  the  community  the  result  of  conduct 
with  good  intent.    The  high  death  rate  of  in- 

>  See  Cooley,  op.  cit.,  p.  104. 


THE  SOCIAL  CONSCIOUSNESS  11 

fants  in  the  downtown  district  of  the  city  is  not 
due  to  the  bad  will  of  anybody  in  particular, 
but,  rather,  to  the  lack  of  social  will  in  provid- 
ing for  the  inspection  of  the  milk  supply,  the 
cleaning  of  the  streets,  and  the  proper  enforce- 
ment of  adequate  tenement-house  laws.  "Thus 
it  is  not  bad  will,  but  lack  of  will,  that  is  mainly 
the  cause  of  evil  things;  they  exist  outside  the 
sphere  of  choice.  We  lack  rational  self-direc- 
tion, and  suffer  not  so  much  from  our  sins,  dark 
as  those  may  be,  as  from  our  blindness,  weak- 
ness, and  confusion."^ 

While  it  is  true  that  most  ills  in  society  are 
not  directly  willed,  yet  it  is,  nevertheless,  true 
that  there  are  some  very  great  evils  that  are 
directly  the  outcome  of  the  evil,  selfish  will  of 
certain  individuals  who,  like  a  distinguished 
citizen  of  no  mean  city,  when  before  an  investi- 
gation committee,  declared  he  and  his  political 
associates  were  working  for  their  own  pockets 
all  the  time.  Such  evils  as  have  been  unearthed 
during  the  last  ten  years  have  been  possible  be- 
cause the  public  had  not  yet  become  conscious 
of  its  power  to  correct  them,  while  individuals 
who  knew  they  were  breaking  the  law  were  will- 
ing to  take  the  risks  because  of  the  ignorance  of 
the  public,  or  because  they  thought  public 
servants  could  be  bought  off  with  threats  or 
bribes.    The  public  social  will  has  been  stirred 

»  Cooley,  op.  cit.,  p.  106. 


12  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

to  action  in  punishing  the  "boodlers"  and 
''grafters,"  ''rebaters"  and  '4oan  sharks"  in 
many  parts  of  the  country,  and  we  believe  it  is 
possible  so  to  develop  the  social  will  that  so- 
ciety by  its  obedience-compelling  power  may  be 
able  to  bring  all  wrongdoers  to  justice,  and  so 
modify  legislation  that  the  individual  wrong- 
doer can  no  longer  dodge  behind  the  corpora- 
tion, or  the  corjioration  dodge  behind  the  law; 
we  shall  then  have  brought  that  kind  of  reform 
through  social  control  that  will  guarantee  the 
greatest  good  to  all  legitimate  factors  of  human 
society. 

Social  Control  and  Reform 

All  our  social  activities,  however,  expressed 
in  movements  and  organized  effort  for  social 
reform,  would  be  but  a  thankless  task  if  they 
did  not  result  in  permanent  habits  of  social  con- 
trol in  the  community.  We  have  had  some 
splendid  examjjles  in  the  recent  past  of  how  the 
will  of  the  people  can  be  aroused  so  as  to  inau- 
gurate great  social  reforms,  as,  for  example, 
in  city  government  administration.  State  pro- 
hibition, control  of  public  service  corporations, 
and  anti-gambling  legislation;  but  it  yet  re- 
mains for  us  to  prove  that  we  can  keep  the 
public  conscience  keyed  up  to  the  tension  of  our 
knowing  whether  these  reforms  are  to  be  made 
permanent    and    progressive    until    we    have 


THE  SOCIAL  CONSCIOUSNESS  13 

reached  the  state  of  permanent  stable  social 
control. 

Here,  then,  is  our  supreme  task — the  develop- 
ment of  administrative  efficiency  that  will  re- 
sult in  permanent  social  control.  This  can  be 
done  only  by  persistent  effort  on  the  part  of  all 
our  educational  institutions  and  agencies  in  the 
home,  in  the  Church,  in  the  State,  and  in  the 
nation  at  large  in  awakening  the  social  con- 
sciousness of  individuals  and  groups  to  see  the 
social  needs  of  our  times;  in  the  organization 
of  public  opinion  through  the  various  means 
in  intercommunication  that  will  become  an  in- 
telligent guide  of  the  social  will,  which  must  be 
aroused  to  definite  and  persistent  effort  by 
altruistic  motives  in  the  Christian  community, 
and  in  the  patient,  persistent  performance  of 
public  duties  until  reforms  become  permanent 
habits  established  in  institutions  of  social  con- 
trol. 


CHAPTER  II 

SOCIAL  ORGANIZATION 

It  is  our  purpose  in  this  chapter  to  give  more 
in  detail  the  reasons  for  social  organization  in 
the  community,  the  principles  to  be  observed 
in  the  formation  of  such  organizations  as  shall 
be  of  real  value  to  the  life  of  the  people,  the 
kinds  of  organizations  that  best  meet  certain 
classes  of  needs  in  society,  the  principles  gov- 
erning the  relation  of  organizations  to  each 
other,  and  the  conclusions  we  may  draw  from 
these  facts  that  may  be  of  value  to  the  social  en- 
gineer in  every  community. 

The  Reasons  for  Social  Organization" 

It  must  be  understood  at  the  outset,  by  all 
workers  within  the  Church  and  Sunday  school, 
or  any  like  organizations  which  propose  to  do 
social  service,  that  the  reasons  for  social  or- 
ganization are  primarily  and  fundamentally  ex- 
pressed in  the  various  needs  of  society  and  the 
actual  conditions  of  human  beings  outside  of 
rather  than  within  the  special  group  that  is 
merely  seeking  to  perpetuate  its  own  organized 
existence,  or  to  get  glory  by  making  some  kind 
of  a  statistical  report  at  a  convention  of  the 

14 


SOCIAL  ORGANIZATION  15 

like-minded.  Whenever  any  organization  has 
reached  a  stage  where  most  of  its  energies  are 
put  forth  to  maintain  its  own  existence,  rather 
than  perform  a  service  to  the  community,  it 
has  already  forfeited  its  right  to  be  called  an 
organization  for  social  service.  It  would  be  like 
a  fellow  I  saw  once  attempting  to  mow  a  field 
of  grass;  the  most  of  his  time  was  spent  in 
whetting  his  scythe,  going  for  a  drink,  eating 
his  lunch,  and  resting  in  the  shade.  The  real 
reason  for  his  being  there  was  that  the  grass 
needed  to  be  cut. 

We  are  beginning  in  our  day  to  sympathize 
with  the  tramp  (rather  than  with  his  employer) 
who  left  his  job  because  he  could  not  see  any 
sane  reason  for  carrying  a  pile  of  stones  from 
one  side  of  the  road  to  the  other,  repeatedly, 
even  to  furnish  an  industrial  test  for  a  *'hobo.'' 
Many  young  men  and  women  lose  interest  in 
organizations  within  the  Church  and  com- 
munity because  there  seems  to  be  no  real  good 
reason  for  their  existence.  There  are  always 
fewer  desertions  from  the  army  in  times  of  war 
than  in  times  of  peace,  because  the  rank  and 
file  can  see  more  clearly  the  reason  for  drill  and 
forced  marches. 

There  is  a  law  in  society  that  should  be 
emphasized  by  all  social  workers ;  it  is  that  the 
association  of  presence  is  always  strengthened 
by  the  association  of  activity;  that  is,  people 


16  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

who  have  been  associated  in  like  forms  of  work 
are  more  likely  to  get  along  together  in  an  or- 
ganization that  depends  for  its  strength  upon 
the  unit}^  of  its  members.  Or,  in  other  words, 
the  strongest  and  most  vigorous  organizations 
are  those  which  have  as  their  real  object  the 
doing  of  work  that  counts  for  something  in  a 
community  apart  from  the  existence  of  the 
organization  itself.  I  sometimes  think  the  real 
reason  the  disciples  had  toiled  all  night  and 
had  taken  nothing  was  because  they  had  cast 
their  net  on  the  wrong  side  of  the  ship;  or,  to 
put  it  in  another  way,  they  had  put  the  ship 
between  the  net  and  the  fish,  for  when,  at  the 
command  of  Jesus,  they  cast  their  net  on  the 
right  side  of  the  ship,  it  was  ' '  filled  with  a  multi- 
tude of  fishes."  It  seems  sometimes  that  as 
"fishers  of  men"  we  get  the  organization  be- 
tween our  real  purpose  and  the  people.  We 
seem  to  spend  more  time  in  holding  meetings 
and  banquets,  and  geeing  and  hawing  over 
points  of  constitutionality  and  parliamentary 
practice  than  in  actual  work  in  the  fields  of  op- 
portunity. 

All  social  organization  is  based  primarily 
upon  needs  that  are  felt  in  the  community,  and 
begins  its  life  only  after  these  needs  have  been 
intelligently  understood  by  some  one  in  the 
group  who  takes  the  initiative,  and  when  they 
have  been  made  known  in  an  intelligent  way  to 


SOCIAL  ORGANIZATION  17 

others  of  the  group.  Later  on,  however,  in  the 
administrative  work  of  social  organizations 
needs  more  remote  are  discovered,  and  ways 
of  meeting  them  are  provided  for  by  further 
organization,  until,  finally,  we  reach  the  stage 
of  culture  and  civilization  that  is  made  up  of  a 
vast  nexus  of  voluntary  purposive  associations 
and  organizations  to  meet  the  various  needs 
of  men  with  highly  developed  social  con- 
sciousness. 

It  will  not  be  necessary  to  go  into  detail  con- 
cerning the  many  and  various  needs  now  in  the 
consciousness  of  society.  We  give  only  one  or 
two  examples :  The  fact  of  cruelty  to  and  neg- 
lect of  children  has  been  known  and  felt  by 
the  human  race  since  the  days  of  Solomon,  when 
with  real  tact  and  practical  wisdom  he  settled 
the  dispute  between  two  women  as  to  who  was 
the  rightful  mother  of  the  child  in  question; 
but,  as  a  matter  of  history,  there  lives  to-day  in 
the  vigor  of  age  the  man  who  organized  the  first 
'* Gerry  Society,"  for  the  specific  purpose  of 
the  prevention  of  cruelty  to  children.  Now, 
everywhere,  we  have  established  child-saving 
institutions,  and  only  recently  a  Conference  on 
Dependent  Children  was  held  in  Washington, 
D.  C,  at  the  call  of  the  President  of  the  United 
States,^  which  has  led  to  the  use  of  the  expres- 
sion, *' conservation  of  the  national  resources  in 

>  CaUed  by  President  Roosevelt,  January  25-26,  1909. 


18  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

children, ' '  and  the  proposed  bill  in  Congress  on 
a  *' Federal  Children's  Bureau,"  which  has  for 
its  purpose  "the  investigation  of  all  matters 
pertaining  to  the  welfare  of  children  and  child- 
life,  and  especially  questions  of  infant  mor- 
tality, the  birth  rate,  physical  degeneracy,  or- 
phanage, juvenile  delinquency  and  juvenile 
courts,  desertion  and  illegitimacy,  dangerous 
occupations,  accidents,  diseases  of  children  of 
the  working  classes,  employment,  legislation 
affecting  children  in  the  several  States  and 
Territories,  and  such  other  facts  as  have  a  bear- 
ing upon  the  health,  efficiency,  character,  and 
training  of  children. ' ' 

Another  example  is  to  be  seen  in  organized 
labor.  Starting  with  the  consciousness  of  need 
under  the  conditions  of  long  hours,  in  unsani- 
tary surroundings,  at  a  meager  wage,  the  move- 
ment to  better  these  conditions  by  shorter  hours 
for  a  day's  work,  healthful  conditions  in  which 
to  work,  and  higher  wages,  has  gone  on  until 
its  demands  embrace  needs  more  remote,  even 
the  distribution  of  profits,  as  well  as  legislation 
and  political  control  in  the  interests  of  the 
wageworkers.  So  from  the  initial  reason  for 
organization  we  at  length  reach  the  point  of 
intelligent  consideration  and  practical  treat- 
ment of  all  the  more  remote  factors  in 
any  problem  that  presses  on  the  public  for 
solution. 


SOCIAL  ORGANIZATION  19 

The  Principles  of  Social  Organizatiokt 

When  the  social  consciousness  of  a  com- 
munity  has  been  aroused  by  the  needs  felt  and 
intelligently  expressed,  and  social  organization 
determined  upon,  it  is  of  importance  to  know 
what  are  the  essential  principles  of  social  or- 
ganization if  we  would  reach  the  best  results 
in  social  service.  We  consider  these  to  be  as 
follows : 

1.  Function  and  not  form.  It  matters  little 
what  form  an  organization  may  assume  if  it 
has  a  true  function.  In  fact,  it  is  a  well-known 
principle  in  biology  that  function  gives  form 
to  the  organism.  This  can  be  observed  in  the 
changed  condition  of  the  skin  of  a  boy's  heel 
after  going  barefooted  in  the  summer  time,  or 
in  the  calloused  palms  of  the  college  professor 
after  hoeing  his  garden  in  the  springtime,  or  in 
a  thousand  instances  in  the  life  of  fauna  and 
flora  in  the  changes  that  take  place  in  the  proc- 
esses of  evolution.  So  with  a  social  organiza- 
tion; its  functions  should  determine  its  form; 
the  work  it  has  to  perform  in  society  should  de- 
termine the  character  of  its  formal  structure. 

2.  Purpose  and  not  plan — that  which  keeps 
in  view  of  the  end  toward  which  we  are  work- 
ing apart  from  the  initial  need.  We  can  some- 
times afford  to  differ  in  matters  of  plan  if  we 
can  all  agree  on  the  purpose  for  which  we  are 


20  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

organized.  When  a  man  in  deep  water  is  cry- 
ing for  help  a  lifeboat  may  be  best,  a  rope  may 
be  good,  a  strong  swimmer  may  be  available, 
or  even  a  plank  thrown  to  him  may  buoy  him 
to  shore;  but  all  the  time  there  is  but  one  pur- 
pose, and  that  is  getting  him  on  shore. 

3.  Consecration  as  well  as  a  constitution. 
In  fact,  in  most  societies  that  do  any  real  work 
in  the  community  there  are  few  of  the  workers 
that  remember  a  line  of  the  constitution.  Som-e- 
times  we  have  to  be  reminded  of  constitutional 
limitations  in  the  way  of  a  man  of  unusual  fit- 
ness for  public  office,  and  proceed  to  get  around 
them  by  legislative  enactment  for  the  sake  of 
utilizing  the  man  of  real  consecration  to  public 
duty.'^  There  is  little  use  in  attempting  social 
organization  for  any  specific  task  unless  there 
is  consecration  and  patience  enough  to  make 
things  go  in  spite  of  opposition  and  discourage- 
ment, for  these  inevitably  follow  social  innova- 
tion. 

4.  A  strong  conviction  in  the  social  mind  that 
human  nature  is  capable  of  responding  to  per- 
sonal appeal  in  the  endeavor  to  save  individuals 
and  groups  from  one  condition  to  a  hetter  state 
of  existence — such  a  faith  as  Jesus  had  when  he 
committed  the  whole  scheme  of  a  world's  re- 
demption to  a  few  fishermen,  taxgatherers,  and 
tentmakers,  who  uj^  to  the  day  of  Pentecost 

*  Secretary  of  State  Knox,  for  example. 


SOCIAL  ORGANIZATION  21 

seemed  to  have  understood  his  mission  but 
poorly,  and  j^et  with  consecration  and  zeal  they 
wrought  until  they  had  turned  the  whole  world 
upside  down  and  placed  the  cross  at  the  front 
of  the  conquering  legions  of  the  Eoman  empire, 
which  made  forever  possible  the  dominance  of 
Christian  over  pagan  civilization. 

It  is  that  Christian  principle  of  conscious- 
ness of  kind  that  enables  us  to  see  in  every 
human  being,  no  matter  how  low  in  the  scale  of 
life,  a  member  of  the  human  brotherhood  who 
needs  our  sympathy  and  our  help,  that  motive 
principle  in  society  that  releases  energies  for 
rescue  and  reform  not  by  virtue  of  what  man 
is,  but  by  virtue  of  what  he  may  become,  by 
the  grace  of  God  and  the  help  of  his  fellows. 

The  Kinds  of  Social  Organization 

The  kind  of  social  organization  necessary 
for  the  performance  of  social  service  in  any 
community  will  have  to  be  determined  from  the 
character  of  the  needs,  immediate  or  remote,  to 
be  met.  For  example:  in  a  city  where  there 
are  vast  numbers  of  delinquent  boys  who  have 
been  before  the  juvenile  court  and  put  on  pro- 
bation, an  organization  like  the  ''Big  Brother 
Movement"  in  New  York  city  might  be  what  is 
needed,  or  a  ''Big  Sister  Movement" — organi- 
zations in  which  the  individual  man  or  woman, 
acts  as  a  big  brother  or  sister  to  some  boy  or 


22  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEEK 

girl  who  is  without  home  advantages  in  giving 
through  the  ministry  of  personality  an  example 
of  better  living  and  a  chance  to  improve  oneself 
by  honest  effort  without  the  stigma  of  accepting 
charity  and  thus  becoming  pauperized.  In  an 
industrial  center  where  there  are  frequent  ac- 
cidents resulting  in  loss  of  work,  and  sometimes 
in  the  loss  of  the  breadwinner,  social  engineer- 
ing might  take  the  form  of  an  organization  to 
place  in  remunerative  service  children  old 
enough  to  work,  or  a  day  nursery  to  care  for 
the  little  ones  while  the  mothers  and  older  mem- 
bers of  the  family  are  at  work,  or  societies  for 
loans  of  money  to  buy  coal  or  pay  rent  under 
such  conditions.  Or  it  may  be  a  need  more  re- 
mote, such  as  an  educational  society  to  help 
some  worthy  boy  or  girl  through  the  college  or 
professional  school.  In  the  congested  city  it 
would  mean  the  institutional  church,  or  the  so- 
cial settlement,  or  a  commission  appointed  by 
the  city  authorities. 

The  mission  fields  afford  another  example; 
here  some  schools  support  their  own  mission- 
ary, or  a  native  Bible  worker;  or  the  church 
may  establish  a  whole  mission  station  in  some 
part  of  the  home  or  foreign  field,  and  call  upon 
the  organized  groups  of  the  various  societies  of 
the  church  to  raise  the  funds  necessary.  We 
may  classify  social  organizations,  therefore, 
from  the  viewpoint  of  need,  or  from  the  view- 


SOCIAL  ORGANIZATION  23 

point  of  the  specific  activities  they  perform  in 
the  social  field.  ^ 

The  Eelation  of  Social  Organizations  to 
Each  Other 

It  is  a  well-known  fact  in  church  work  that 
there  is  often  a  lack  of  harmony  and  coopera- 
tion between  the  various  subsidiary  organiza- 
tions of  the  local  church,  and  often  between 
like  organizations  of  different  denominations. 
Now  this  is  being  overcome  in  many  quarters 
by  the  progress  of  federation  and  brother- 
hood among  the  like-minded  in  denominational 
bodies.  This,  however,  is  characteristic  of  all 
social  organizations.  There  are  stages  in  the 
life  of  organizations  in  their  relation  to  each 
other  just  as  we  observe  in  the  group  life  of 
the  race.  Conflict  is  followed  by  toleration  of 
equals ;  alliance  and  cooperation  follows,  and  at 
length  sympathetic  and  pleasurable  relations 
are  established  as  a  result  of  an  intelligent 
understanding  of  mutual  interests  in  the  same 
social  field.  It  would  be  a  fact  greatly  to  be 
deplored  if  the  various  organizations  of  the 
Christian  Church  should  fall  behind  industrial 
and  political  organizations  in  the  progress  of 
peace.  The  time  will  come  in  the  local  church 
and  the  individual  denomination,  as  well  as  be- 

*  For  a  fuller  classification  see  chap,   iv  of   "Social  Aspects   of 
Religious  Institutions,"  by  the  writer. 


24  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

tween  all  the  forces  of  Christian  effort,  when 
the  program  of  PauP  will  be  carried  out  in  the 
endeavor  to  minister  to  the  social  needs  of 
mankind. 

Social  organization  in  the  church  for  social 
service  in  the  community  does  not  necessarily 
involve  a  separate  group  of  men  and  women, 
or  of  boys  and  girls  with  banners,  banquets, 
and  bouquets,  but,  on  the  contrary,  it  may  mean 
no  specific  new  organization  within  the  church 
at  all,  but,  rather,  an  intelligent  direction  by 
the  superintendent  of  the  Sunday  school,  teach- 
ers, and  special  field  workers,  of  capable  young 
men  and  women,  and  even  big  boys  and  girls, 
in  lines  of  effort  of  their  own  accord  or  under 
the  direction  of  social  organizations  outside 
that  can  be  trusted  to  give  such  direction.  In 
fact,  a  great  mistake  is  often  made  in  organiz- 
ing a  separate  group  in  competition  with,  if 
not  in  actual  opposition  to,  like  organizations 
already  in  the  field  that  should  be  strengthened 
by  strong  men  and  women  from  the  Church, 
rather  than  harassed  by  their  misdirected  zeal, 
as  is  sometimes  the  case.  The  Associated 
Charities,  for  instance,  or  the  Children's  So- 
ciety, Rescue  Mission,  Clinic,  the  Municipal  Dis- 
pensary, Lodging  House,  the  Day  School  admin- 
istration, Boys'  Club,  Chamber  of  Commerce, 
City  Clubs  for  Community  Improvement,  and 

I  1  Cor.  12. 


SPCIAL  ORGANIZATION  25 

many  other  like  organizations  for  community 
welfare  and  social  betterment,  may  well  be  co- 
operated with  and  enriched  by  the  services  of 
men  trained  in  the  Church  and  Sunday  school ; 
and  many  cases  of  need  and  plans  for  com- 
munity improvement  could  be  delegated  to 
these  organizations  and  societies. 

But  in  communities  where  this  cannot  be 
done  let  there  be  organized  first  a  group  for  the 
intelligent  study  of  the  needs  to  be  met,  a  care- 
ful survey  of  the  membership  with  respect  to 
fitness  for  leadership  in  the  various  groups  to 
be  formed  to  meet  specific  needs;  and,  where 
proper  leaders  cannot  be  secured,  it  would  be 
better  to  wait  before  organizing  until  such 
leadership  as  is  needed  may  be  trained  or  other- 
wise secured. 

Gastronomical  appeals  should  seldom,  if  ever, 
be  made  for  purposes  of  membership  or  of 
arousing  interest.  If  we  must  have  banquets, 
"feeds,"  and  suppers,  let  them  be  only  inci- 
dental to  the  serious  work  of  interesting  men 
in  their  fellows.  Social  organization,  there- 
fore, must  be  based  upon  reasons  that  appeal 
to  men,  principles  that  are  fundamental  to  suc- 
cessful effort  and  achievement,  and  of  such 
kinds  as  the  various  needs  require,  and  so  re- 
lated to  the  entire  field  of  social  service  as  to 
avoid  social  friction  and  economic  waste  in  min- 
istering to  the  social  needs  of  the  community. 


CHAPTER  III 

SOCIAL  MACHINERY  AND  SOCIAL  ENGINEERING 

In  the  last  chapter  we  considered  social  or- 
ganization from  the  viewpoint  of  the  reasons 
for  such  organization,  the  principles  underly- 
ing such  organization,  the  different  kinds  of 
organizations  that  correspond  to  the  needs  in 
society,  and  the  relations  existing  between  dif- 
ferent kinds  of  social  organizations.  It  is  de- 
sirable at  this  point  to  consider  the  practical 
phases  of  social  activity  by  discussing  social 
machinery  and  social  engineering. 

In  the  ordinary  fields  of  human  activity  we 
are  confronted  with  certain  tasks,  we  are  ac- 
quainted with  the  forces  about  us  available  for 
work,  and  we  therefore  invent  machinery  or 
utilize  mechanical  appliances  already  invented 
to  accomplish  the  work  involved  in  our  tasks. 
We  also  discover  that  better  work  can  be  done, 
and  our  tasks  accomplished  quicker,  if  we  know 
how  to  engineer  the  forces  available  and  direct 
the  workers  so  as  to  secure  the  greatest  effi- 
ciency with  the  least  waste  of  time  and  material. 
This  involves  the  practical  engineer  as  well  as 
the  one  who  can  work  out  the  technical  prob- 
lems connected  with  our  work.    So  in  the  work 

26 


SOCIAL  MACHINERY  27 

of  the  church  and  its  various  organizations  it 
is  not  sufficient  to  merely  organize  a  group  of 
workers  for  any  social  task.  We  must  also  con- 
sider the  social  forces  available,  we  must  also 
invent  social  machinery,  and  utilize  the  prac- 
tical engineer  in  directing  the  workers  in  the 
field  as  well  as  discover  the  technical  ability  of 
the  professional  leaders  in  social  work. 

Not  disregarding  the  achievements  in  pure 
science,  we  are  to-day  putting  greater  emphasis 
in  education  upon  applied  science,  upon  those 
studies  in  mechanics  and  engineering  that  will 
equip  men  for  doing  things  as  well  as  knowing 
things.  So  in  our  religious  and  moral  activities, 
we  do  not  depreciate  the  achievements  of  the 
philosophers,  the  theologians,  and  the  sociolo- 
gists in  the  fields  of  discovery  and  organization, 
yet  to-day  we  need  to  place  more  emphasis  upon 
the  practical  tasks  of  utilizing  the  social  forces 
we  have  discovered,  and  in  keeping  men  at  their 
work  until  achievement  for  society  has  been 
realized.  In  religious  education  we  have  been 
for  years  drawing  out  of  the  treasure  house  of 
knowledge  the  truths  of  the  Word  of  God  for 
human  conduct,  but  for  some  reason  we  have 
not  gotten  the  results  in  achievement  for  the 
human  race  that  all  this  teaching  would  de- 
mand. So  we  have  begun  to  look  to  the  field  of 
applied  Christianity,  with  the  purpose  of  in- 
venting ways  and  means  of  utilizing  all  these 


28  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

forces  and  splendid  energies  in  the  Church  and 
Sunday  school  that  seem  to  have  in  large  meas- 
ure been  going  to  waste  because  we  have  had  no 
social  mechanics  through  which  to  make  use  of 
them.  And  even  where  we  have  succeeded  in 
social  invention  we  have  been  defeated  in  our 
purpose  often  from  the  lack  of  practical  men 
to  manage  the  forces  in  the  field.  We  have 
often  placed  men  in  responsible  positions  in 
church  work  not  because  they  were  competent 
but  simply  because  they  wanted  the  office,  or 
because  we  were  willing  to  submit  to  a  majority 
vote.  In  some  communities  churches  and  Sun- 
day schools  have  been  depleted  in  ranks  not  be- 
cause there  was  no  machinery  and  organization, 
but  because  there  were  no  practical  leaders 
available  to  do  the  work  required. 

Social  Machinery 
By  social  machinery  we  mean  that  which  so- 
ciety invents  or  appropriates  for  the  purpose 
of  making  its  will  effective.  It  may  be  a  plan 
or  mode  of  action  involving  an  individual,  or  a 
group  of  individuals,  or  even  another  organiza- 
tion which  is  subservient  to  the  larger  group. 
For  illustration :  an  agent,  delegate,  or  ambas- 
sador is  not  a  vital  part  of  the  organization  or 
society  sending  him,  but  simply  a  part  of  the 
social  machinery  used  to  carry  on  its  work.  Or, 
again,  take,  for  example,  the  printing  office  of 


SOCIAL  MACniNEEY  29 

the  government,  with  its  network  of  organiza- 
tion :  it  is  established,  organized,  and  equipped 
for  the  purpose  of  printing  the  matter  used  in 
government  business,  thus  making  the  will  of 
the  government  known  to  individuals,  com- 
munities, and  responsible  groups  which  com- 
pose the  nation  at  large.  We  may  classify 
briefly  these  various  agencies  and  machinery  of 
society  as  follows : 

1.  Civic:  such  as  bureaus,  departments,  com- 
missions, boards,  trustees,  etc. 

2.  Military:  such  as  armies  and  navies,  with 
their  subdivisions  and  boards,  staffs,  etc.,  con- 
stabulary, etc. 

3.  Educational:  institutions,  school  boards, 
surveys,  research  bureaus,  institutes,  museums, 
exhibitions,  etc. 

4.  Religious:  churches,  institutional  boards, 
missions,  settlements,  classes,  etc. 

5.  Industrial  and  Commercial:  transportation 
and  intercommunication  lines,  manufactories, 
markets,  trade  centers,  etc. 

6.  Charities  and  Philanthropies:  almshouses, 
asylums,  dispensaries,  hospitals,  etc. 

7.  Correctional  Agencies:  courts,  prisons,  re- 
formatories, industrial  colonies,  juvenile  courts, 
and  probation  system,  etc. 

All  of  these  agencies  and  machinery  of  so- 
ciety are  invented  or  created  and  utilized  by 
the  group  life  of  the  State  to  make  the  social 


30  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

will  effective  in  carrying  out  the  policies  of  the 
government.  Now,  the  practical  question  for 
us  in  this  connection  is,  How  are  we  to  relate 
the  millions  of  men  and  women,  boys  and  girls 
who  are  in  our  Sunday  schools  (and  will  be 
passing  through  and  out  into  the  intricate  net- 
work of  society  from  generation  to  generation) 
to  the  tremendous  social  tasks  involved  in  the 
use  of  all  this  machinery  that  society  has  in- 
vented and  will  invent  to  make  its  will  effective? 
How  can  the  Sunday  school  as  an  educational 
institution  apply  the  knowledge  of  social  or- 
ganization and  of  social  machinery,  as  above 
described,  to  the  task  of  socializing  the  indi- 
viduals we  control  so  far  as  their  moral  and 
religious  instruction  is  concerned? 

It  may  be  assumed  at  the  outset  that  most  of 
the  adults  in  the  school  have  gleaned  a  body  of 
knowledge  from  contact  with  society,  as  they 
are  daily  a  part  of  it,  hence  this  body  of  knowl- 
edge needs  only  to  be  systematized  in  the  mind 
of  the  student ;  and  to  do  this  the  teacher  must 
be  able  to  give  the  student  the  principles  and 
theory  of  social  organization.  He  can  do  this 
by  the  use  of  text-books  or  by  the  ordinary 
method  of  the  lecture  room.  This  is  the  theo- 
retical part  of  the  task. 

The  students  are,  however,  capable  of  being 
organized  for  social  group  work,  so  that  they 
may  get  a  practical  knowledge  of  the  subject 


SOCIAL  MACHINERY  31 

under  discussion.  It  is  true  this  will  be 'on  a 
small  scale,  but  almost  all  the  phases  of  social 
machinery  may  be  demonstrated  in  this  way 
among  the  students  in  the  community  life.  This 
involves  also  field  work  under  the  leadership  of 
a  competent  and  prudent  teacher  or  helper. 
For  example :  visits  may  be  made  to  legislative 
halls,  courtrooms,  industrial  plants,  banks,  so- 
cial settlements,  institutional  churches,  hos- 
pitals, asylums,  dispensaries,  parks,  play- 
grounds, country  suburbs,  etc.,  where  the 
organized  life  of  society  may  be  demonstrated 
and  the  working  of  social  machinery  observed. 
Again,  these  phases  of  social  activity  may  be 
demonstrated  by  maps,  charts,  photographs, 
and  by  getting  the  workers  in  these  various 
fields  to  visit  the  class  and  describe  their  work 
in  a  personal  way. 

It  is  true  that  some  of  our  social  tasks  may 
involve  the  invention  of  new  modes  of  activity,, 
as,  for  example,  the  kindergarten,  the  Sunday 
school  and  church  nursery  room,  etc. ;  but  most 
of  our  social  tasks  may  be  performed  by  simply 
utilizing  the  machinery  already  in  use  by  others 
or  by  adapting  old  methods  to  new  conditions. 
There  is  one  fact  with  respect  to  social  ma- 
chinery that  is  most  encouraging:  it  is  that  it 
has  no  patents — so  we  can  appropriate  it  at  will. 
We  sometimes  think,  however,  that  what  is  used 
in  so-called  ''secular"  society  should,  there- 


32  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEEK 

fore,  per  se,  not  be  used  by  a  religious  in- 
stitution. I  have  no  sympathy  with  that  view. 
* '  The  altar  sanctifieth  the  gift, ' '  and  one  of  the 
lessons  we  want  to  learn  quickly  in  our  church 
work  is  not  to  let  the  devil  have  the  monopoly 
of  much  of  the  social  machinery  available  for 
doing  good  in  the  community. 

An  old  godly  shoemaker  in  a  Southern  town 
was  unalterably  opposed  to  the  introduction  of 
an  organ  in  the  church  where  he  worshiped. 
At  last  the  younger  members  of  the  congrega- 
tion outnumbered  the  "conservatives,"  and  an 
organ  was  purchased.  The  first  Sunday  there- 
after service  was  well  started  by  a  hymn,  ac- 
companied by  the  organ,  after  which  the  super- 
intendent of  the  school  called  on  the  old  brother 
to  pray.  All  was  quiet.  Again  the  superin- 
tendent said:  "Brother  B will  please  lead 

us  in  prayer,"  and  to  the  amusement  of  the 
school  and  the  amazement  of  the  superintend- 
ent, Brother  B made  reply,  "Call  on  your 

machine. ' '  The  point  I  wish  to  make  is  this : 
in  the  work  of  social  service  for  the  community 
the  Church  and  Sunday  school  do  not  neces- 
sarily need  to  invent  new  forms  of  social  ma- 
chinery for  carrying  on  such  work,  but  they 
can  easily  and  readily  utilize  the  forms  of  or- 
ganization and  machinery  already  worked  out 
for  them  in  the  community,  and  the  great  op- 
portunity we  now  have  is  to  give  many  of  these 


SOCIAL  MACHINEEY  33 

so-called  secular  forms  a  religious  significance 
by  manning  them  with  religious  workers. 

Social.  Engineering 

We  mean  by  this  expression  the  art  of 
making  social  machinery  move  with  the  least 
friction  and  with  the  best  result  in  work  done. 
It  is  well  known  that  the  man  who  is  at  the 
head  of  a  great  construction  company  is  in- 
terested in  securing  men  who  can  manage  the 
technique  of  planning  a  structure  and  judg- 
ing materials.  When  the  great  Stadium  at 
Syracuse  University  was  being  constructed  I 
used  to  admire  greatly  the  president  of  the  con- 
struction company,  the  architects,  and  the  en- 
gineers, who  did  the  planning  and  the  buying  of 
materials,  etc.,  but  no  class  of  men  gave  me 
more  inspiration  to  do  big  things  than  those 
men  we  call  practical  engineers,  who  kept  four 
or  five  hundred  men  steadily  at  work  on  the 
job  in  such  an  organized  way  that  there  was 
no  loafing  and  no  getting  in  each  other's  way, 
while  the  structure  went  steadily  but  surely  up 
to  completion. 

Now,  in  the  work  of  religious  social  engineer- 
ing we  need  just  such  men  as  can  get  things 
done  by  the  use  of  ordinary  men  in  forms  of 
constructive  work  in  the  community. 

I  know  a  church  that  has  succeeded  in  secur- 
ing over  five  hundred  new  members  in  less  than 


34  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

fifteen  montlis,  making  in  all  over  a  thousand 
members,  and,  on  personal  investigation,  I  dis- 
covered that  it  was  due  not  to  any  new  ma- 
chinery brought  into  the  church  service,  nor  by 
any  startling  new  methods  of  work,  but  simply 
by  practical  engineering  of  the  forces  of  the 
church  by  a  few  men,  the  pastor  himself  being 
the  leader.  During  the  winter  a  few  years  ago 
he  found  the  shops  in  his  district  running  on 
part  time,  or  closed  because  of  the  financial  de- 
pression. He  got  some  of  the  wealthy  men  to 
volunteer  to  give  practical  help  to  the  families 
of  these  shop  men,  and  he  thus  won  many  of 
them  and  their  families  to  his  church.  Again, 
the  following  winter,  he  wanted  to  interest  the 
men  of  the  church  in  the  working  men  outside 
the  church,  so  he  cooperated  with  the  Young 
Men's  Christian  Association  field-workers  and 
canvassed  his  whole  district  one  Sunday  for  a 
big  evening  service  for  men,  giving  them  the 
main  floor  of  the  auditorium,  while  the  gallery 
was  reserved  for  the  women;  and  then  he  se- 
cured the  strongest  speaker  for  men  available, 
so  that  as  a  result  he  has  to-day  the  support 
and  good  will  of  every  labor  union  in  that  part 
of  the  town,  because  he  has  demonstrated  to 
them  that  he  and  his  churchmen  are  interested 
in  the  temporal  and  spiritual  welfare  of  the 
men  of  the  community.  Now  he  has  solved  the 
problem  of  social  engineering. 


SOCIAL  ENGINEERING  35 

It  may  be  thought  by  some  that  we  have  few 
such  men  and  women  in  our  Sunday  schools 
and  churches  who  know  how  to  do  the  practical 
engineering  in  the  group  work  of  the  com- 
munity. I  think  this  is  not  the  case.  I  believe 
there  are  many  such  if  we  only  knew  how  to 
discover  them.  A  man  who  is  working  in  the 
''gang"  to-day  may  be  a  foreman  or  practical 
engineer  to-morrow  in  the  work  of  construction 
in  the  building  trades.  So  in  our  church  work : 
if  we  know  the  needs  of  the  work  we  are  under- 
taking, and  the  machinery  to  be  manned,  we  can 
often  discover  the  right  man  in  one  of  our 
groups  to  become  a  leader  or  social  engineer  in 
the  work  of  constructive  social  servdce  in  the 
church  community. 

In  education  emphasis  is  being  placed  to-day 
upon  discovering  the  aptitudes  of  the  student, 
and  then  directing  his  education  according  to 
his  bent.  So  in  this  work  of  social  leadership 
we  may  not  hope  to  succeed  by  trying  to  put 
all  through  the  same  mold.  We  must  recognize, 
as  did  Paul,  that  there  are  diversities  of  gifts, 
but  the  same  spirit,  and  seek  to  get  men  and 
women  into  forms  of  service  they  can  do,  and 
so  direct  them  that  together  they  may  accom- 
plish much  for  the  uplift  of  the  whole  com- 
munity and  at  the  same  time  develop  in  the 
man  a  character  worthy  of  any  religious  test. 

Such  men  will  be  trained  only  in  the  labora- 


36  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

tory  of  human  experience,  so  we  must  begin  by 
teaching  the  boys  to  work  for  their  fellows. 
We  can  begin  with  team  work  in  play,  until  we 
get  them  in  later  years  to  stand  firm  in  every 
good  work  for  social  reform  and  not  shirk  even 
when  the  struggle  is  hard  and  expensive. 

If  it  is  a  social  service  of  a  political  char- 
acter, do  not  put  a  crank  on  the  job,  but  some 
man  who  knows  something  about  politics,  who 
has  been  in  a  caucus,  who  knows  how  to  get 
things  done  in  such  a  body  representing  differ- 
ing interests.  A  good  illustration  of  this  is  the 
attempt  to  organize  the  forces  of  the  Church  in 
anti-saloon  work.  You  cannot  make  a  moral 
issue  a  political  issue  and  then  hope  to  succeed 
in  the  campaign  as  you  would  in  a  debating  so- 
ciety or  in  a  revival  meeting.  The  character  of 
the  task  demands  political  methods  (of  course 
of  the  right  sort).  If  the  task  is  one  of  charity 
or  philanthropy,  put  a  man  on  the  job  who 
knows  how  to  deal  with  the  case,  or  who  knows 
to  what  institution  within  the  city  to  refer  it. 
If  it  involves  financial  ability,  put  a  man  on  the 
job  who  has  some  notions  of  finance,  and  who 
knows  the  value  of  money.  If  it  is  a  religious 
task,  put  a  man  on  the  job  who  has  gifts  of 
spiritual  insight  and  whose  heart  interest  is  in 
that  kind  of  work. 


CHAPTER  IV 

SOCIAL  CLASSIFICATION,  CLEAVAGE,  AND  CONFLICT 

We  have  considered  thus  far  in  our  studies 
in  the  field  of  social  service  the  meaning  and 
value  of  social  consciousness  in  the  forming  of 
public  opinion,  arousing  the  social  will,  and  de- 
veloping social  control;  the  meaning  and  prin- 
ciples of  social  organization;  and  the  practical 
value  of  social  machinery  and  social  engineer- 
ing in  carrying  on  our  work  m  the  fields  of  so- 
cial activity.  We  come  now  to  the  considera- 
tion of  another  very  important  subject  which 
confronts  the  social  engineer  at  every  turn,  and 
that  is  the  fact  of  class  consciousness  which  is 
awakened  by  the  facts  of  social  classification, 
cleavage,  and  conflict,  which  may  have  been  in 
the  process  of  formation  long  before  the  many 
become  conscious  of  their  presence  in  society. 
Unless  the  social  engineer  admits  these  facts 
and  studies  them,  he  will  often  be  defeated  in 
his  plans  in  the  practical  fields  of  social  reform. 

While  there  is,  no  doubt,  to-day  a  great  deal 
of  random,  meaningless  talk  about  the  signifi- 
cance of  "the  class  struggle,"  **the  class  con- 
sciousness," ''the  caste  system,"  and  like  terms, 
yet  there  is   some  serious   discussion  among 

37 


38  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

earnest  men  whose  interest  in  the  welfare  of 
society  is  unquestioned  concerning  the  mean- 
ing and  ultimate  results  of  class  consciousness 
and  class  conflict  in  America  to-day.^ 

It  will  not  be  possible  for  us  within  the  limits 
of  this  chapter  to  go  into  a  full  sociological 
treatment  of  the  origin  of  class  based  upon 
facts  of  race  differentiation,  or  differences 
growing  out  of  degrees  of  vitality,  or  of  per- 
sonality. But  we  will  confine  our  discussion  to 
some  of  those  more  simple  and  practical  dis- 
tinctions of  class  which  are  based  upon  some 
social  advantage  gained  by  the  possession  of 
wealth,  culture,  skill,  leadership,  heroism,  fam- 
ily, pedigree,  or  royal  prerogative. 

Social  CLAssiFicATioisr 
One  of  the  first  questions  raised  is.  How  are 
social  classes  constituted,  and  how  do  class  dis- 
tinctions arise  in  any  country,  especially  in  a 
democracy  like  our  own?  I  think  that  all  so- 
cial classification  grows  primarily  out  of  the 
tasks  we  have  to  perform  in  doing  the  world's 
work,  or  the  place  we  fill  in  society  made  for  us 
or  by  us,  and  the  natural  consequences  in  phys- 
ical, mental,  moral,  and  social  structure  that 
follow.  "Class  distinction"  is  a  term  that  has 
come   to    represent   various    classifications    of 

1  See  Professor  Cooley,  "Social  Organization,"  chap,  xxi;  also 
John  R.  Conunons,  Publications  of  American  Sociological  Society, 
vol.  ii,  1907,  pp.  138fr. 


CLASS  CONSCIOUSNESS  39 

population  within  the  boundaries  of  a  nation, 
State,  or  community,  and  has  its  true  basis  in 
social  advantages  of  the  individuals  or  groups 
with  a  class  consciousness.  It  is  possible  to  con- 
ceive of  a  time  in  the  history  of  the  human  race 
when  every  individual  in  the  struggle  for  ex- 
istence— with  the  crude  weapons  which  nature 
furnished  him,  or  his  unfolding  mental  abilities 
could  invent,  and  his  unskilled  hands  could 
fashion — was  on  an  equal  footing  with  every 
other  creature  of  his  own  species,  just  as  we 
may  conceive  of  a  time  in  the  history  of  the 
earth's  surface  when  everything  was  at  sea 
level;  for  there  was  no  land  with  hills  and 
mountain  ranges. 

From  another  viewpoint  it  is  possible  to  con- 
ceive of  a  state  of  society  at  some  **  millennial 
dawn"  when  every  man  will  be  again  on  an 
equal  footing  socially  with  every  other  man, 
just  as  we  may  conceive  of  some  distant  day 
when  this  old  earth  by  the  process  of  erosion 
and  deposit  will  again  be  reduced  to  a  dead 
level,  or,  like  other  dead  planets,  be  reduced  to 
a  condition  of  absolute  death,  when  there  will 
be  no  question  of  class  distinctions  because 
there  will  be  no  one  to  raise  the  interrogation. 
But  when  we  come  to  study  the  actual  world 
in  which  we  live  and  move  and  have  our  being 
we  discover  natural  forces  which  produce  varia- 
tion in  every  aspect  that  appeals  to  the  human 


40  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

senses.  In  the  inorganic  world  we  discover  the 
variations  in  configuration  of  the  earth's  sur- 
face of  rivers,  lakes,  and  oceans,  of  mountains, 
hills,  and  valleys,  and  in  the  quality  of  soil  and 
minerals  that  rib  the  eternal  hills.  In  the  or- 
ganic world  also  we  have  the  innumerable  varia- 
tions in  structure,  form,  and  quality  of  fauna 
and  flora  that  keep  the  zoologist  and  the  bota- 
nist until  now  busy  in  making  their  classifica- 
tions. It  is  not  strange,  therefore,  that  in 
the  world  of  human  associations  we  should 
find  variations  and  classifications  of  men  and 
women,  the  result  of  the  operation  of  social  laws 
and  forces  just  as  real  and  effective  as  those 
we  have  discovered  in  the  inorganic  and  organic 
spheres  of  nature's  activities — with  this  marked 
difference,  however,  that  here  we  are  dealing 
with  the  element  of  freedom  in  personality 
which  gives  a  relativity  to  all  class  distinctions, 
because  no  barriers  are  absolutely  fixed,  for 
even  the  barriers  of  caste,  as  in  India  and  in 
other  countries,  have  been  broken  by  the  force 
of  Christian  brotherhood. 

From  an  economic  standpoint  many  class 
distinctions  are  natural  and  necessary,  for  the 
greater  part  of  the  world's  work  is  economi- 
cally dependent  upon  class  distinctions.  Eco- 
nomically, it  is  inconvenient  for  a  professional 
man,  who  must  always  be  dressed  in  suitable 
form  to  receive  his  clients,  to  be  his  own  coach- 


CLASS  CONSCIOUSNESS  41 

man  and  groom  his  own  horse.  Likewise  it  is 
inconvenient  for  his  wife  to  receive  callers  while 
she  is  busy  with  domestic  duties  in  the  kitchen. 
Hence  the  natural  thing  is  for  the  professional 
man  to  hire  a  coachman,  and  his  wife  a  maid  or 
cook.  So  in  every  sphere  of  human  activity,  a 
division  of  labor  is  necessary  from  an  economic 
standpoint,  and  this  tends  naturally  to  fix  or 
mark  off  one  class  from  another  in  conscious- 
ness; and  yet  we  can  see  that  all  are  equally 
necessary  for  the  economic  and  social  life  of  the 
community,  and  hence  from  a  broader  and  more 
intelligent  viewpoint  each  class  should  be  hon- 
ored as  a  necessary  part  of  the  social  process. 

Varieties  of  Social  Classification 

In  monarchical  governments  we  generally 
speak  of  four  classes  of  population — the  rul- 
ing class,  the  titled  class,  the  gentry,  and  the 
peasants — while  in  a  republic  like  ours,  based 
upon  ideas  of  equality,  liberty,  and  fraternity, 
there  is,  theoretically,  but  one  class — ''the  peo- 
ple"; but  as  a  matter  of  fact  we  have  at  least 
three,  if  not  four,  general  social  classes:  the 
wealthy,  elite,  or  leisure  class,  which  usually  in- 
cludes those  who  govern;  the  middle,  or  pro- 
fessional and  employing  class,  usually  owning 
more  or  less  property  or  controlling  property 
interests ;  the  so-called  working  class,  or  labor- 
ing class,  those  who  do  the  manual  labor  neces- 


42  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

sary  in  the  supply  of  human  needs ;  and  a  fourth 
class,  known  as  the  pauper  class,  who  are  un- 
able to  produce  for  themselves  and  are  depend- 
ent upon  those  who  give  to  their  support  wholly 
or  in  part.  There  are  still  other  classifications 
that  are  more  general  in  character,  based  en- 
tirely upon  what  is  termed  social  standing. 
These  are  sometimes  called  the  upper  classes, 
the  middle  classes,  and  the  lower  classes.  At 
other  times  they  are  designated  the  elite  and 
the  common  people.  From  an  economic  view- 
point they  are  called  rich  and  poor;  from  an 
educational  basis,  the  educated  and  uneducated, 
the  learned  and  the  ignorant;  from  a  moral 
viewpoint  we  classify  men  as  good  and  bad; 
from  a  religious  test,  as  saints  and  sinners, 
believers  and  unbelievers;  from  a  theological 
standpoint  we  label  them  as  orthodox  or  het- 
erodox. 

It  is  easy  to  see  at  a  glance  without  very 
much  reflection  that  in  the  constitution  of  all 
these  various  social  classes  there  is  a  quantita- 
tive as  well  as  a  qualitative  element ;  and  if  we 
go  back  far  enough  in  the  historical  evolution 
of  society,  we  will  find  that  all  classifications 
have  their  basis  in  property,  prowess,  or  phys- 
ical and  psychical  traits  of  personality.  These 
more  modern  classifications  of  society  are  based 
upon  the  same  principles,  or  upon  principles 
that  have  been  derived  from  these.     This  ac- 


CLASS  CONSCIOUSNESS  43 

counts  for  the  fact,  as  we  shall  see  later,  that  in 
communities  where  the  caste  system  or  other 
artificial  distinctions  have  not  already  become 
fixed  the  barriers  between  the  various  social 
classes  may  be  easily  crossed,  as  the  individual 
may  possess  or  be  deficient  in  these  i^rinciples 
or  possessions  which  entitle  him  to  class  dis- 
tinction. One  proof  that  such  distinctions  of 
class  are  more  or  less  artificial  and  quantitative 
is  the  fact  that  under  the  stress  of  some  su- 
preme need  or  sudden  danger  or  fear  these 
ideas  of  class  distinction  for  the  time  being 
vanish  from  consciousness  and  all  seem  to  be 
on  a  common  level — for  example,  a  shipwreck 
or  a  fire.  It  is,  therefore,  safe  to  conclude  that 
social  classifications  are  largely  a  matter  of  the 
social  class-consciousness,  and  leisure  tends  to 
emphasize  such  distinctions  in  consciousness; 
and,  as  a  rule,  those  who  make  the  most  of  such 
distinctions  are  those  who  lack  the  wider  social 
perspective,  or  do  the  least  of  the  world's 
work.  After  all,  it  is  those  who  flaunt  their  fur- 
belows in  the  faces  of  those  who  toil  that  stir 
up  the  greatest  amount  of  hatred  or  ill  feeling 
between  the  social  classes  of  a  community. 

Factoes  Which  Give  Social  Advantage 

If  we  discover  that  class  distinctions  are 
natural  and  necessary,  and  that  class  conscious- 
ness is  a  fact  in  society  that  cannot  be  ignored. 


44  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

it  is  a  matter  of  interest  to  all  educational  in- 
stitutions that  have  to  do  with  the  plastic  period 
of  youth,  when  social  ambitions  are  ripening 
into  definite  fruits  of  activity,  that  they  should 
take  into  consideration  what  are  the  factors 
available  in  the  life  of  the  individual  that  may 
give  him  social  advantage  among  his  fellows  in 
the  realms  of  social  progress. 

Among  the  many  factors  which  give  social 
advantage  may  be  enumerated  the  following: 

1.  Blood  relationship,  or  the  status  of  one's 
family.  It  is  an  old  saying  that  ''blood  will 
tell,"  and  there  is  nothing  which  gives  greater 
advantage  in  society  in  many  parts  of  the  world 
than  the  fact  of  being  born  well.  In  some  com- 
munities one's  pedigree  or  family  tree  is  an 
asset  which  gives  him  entrance  to  the  highest 
social  circles.  Of  course  one  in  this  country 
of  heterogeneous  population  does  not  insist  on 
climbing  the  family  tree  too  high,  lest,  as  a  dis- 
tinguished African  from  the  South  said,  *'he 
find  an  ape  up  there." 

2.  Wealth.  Just  as  among  primitive  peoples 
property  was  a  mark  of  social  distinction  and 
a  gauge  of  power  in  the  community,  so  to-day 
wealth  has  become  a  social  barometer,  and  fre- 
quently those  who  have  the  greatest  wealth  hold 
the  highest  place  in  the  social  scale,  if  we  are  to 
judge  from  the  attention  they  receive  from 
their  fellows,  deserved  or  undeserved.     This 


CLASS  CONSCIOUSNESS  45 

point  can  be  emphasized  by  reading  the  guest 
list  of  public  functions  and  state  dinners. 

3.  Culture.  In  every  country  the  wise  and 
the  cultured  have  sooner  or  later  gotten  to  the 
top  in  the  social  scale,  and  in  no  country  more 
than  in  the  United  States  is  the  cultured  man, 
the  educated  man,  or  the  man  of  practical  wis- 
dom thought  more  of  and  respected  more  by 
all  classes  of  society.  Hence  next  to  wealth, 
culture  or  learning  gives  one  social  prestige. 
We  see  this  illustrated  again  and  again  in  the 
career  of  the  American  student.  Coming,  as 
he  often  does,  from  the  homes  of  those  who 
struggle  for  existence,  and  do  the  hard  labor 
of  the  world's  work,  after  passing  through  the 
school,  the  academy,  the  college,  or  the  univer- 
sity, he  has  usually  won  a  position  in  the  social 
scale  which  gives  him  the  hope  and  the  ambi- 
tion, if  not  the  actual  ability,  to  attain  to  the 
highest  positions  in  social  standing  in  the  com- 
munity where  he  lives. 

4.  Position  or  profession.  In  America  posi- 
tion, or  profession,  such  as  governments  offer, 
or  the  management  of  some  great  industrial  or 
commercial  enterprise,  or  the  profession  of 
teaching,  of  preaching,  of  the  law,  or  of  medi- 
cine, gives  social  advantage.  Here,  as  in  all 
other  factors,  character  counts  for  more  than 
the  mere  position  or  profession.  The  time  has 
come  when  society  rewards  a  man  not  by  virtue 


46  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

of  his  office,  or  the  cloth  he  wears,  but  by  the 
character  of  the  service  he  renders  to  society. 

5.  Leadership.  The  ability  to  take  the  lead 
in  any  movement  among  any  body  of  men,  as 
illustrated  in  military  circles  in  the  army  and 
in  the  navj^,  in  political  life,  as  well  as  in  the 
field  of  athletic  sports.  In  America  many  a 
man  of  humble  origin,  like  the  immortal  Lin- 
coln, has  won  his  place  in  the  hall  of  fame  and 
in  the  highest  circles  of  society  by  the  genius 
of  leadership  in  all  these  fields  of  human  en- 
deavor. 

6.  Skill  or  inventive  genius.  The  ability  to 
do  something  that  no  one  else  can  do,  whether 
it  be  in  the  field  of  diplomacy,  in  statecraft,  in 
invention,  navigation,  engineering,  or  as  an 
"Indian"  scout. 

7.  Heroism.  The  man  who  dares  to  take  his 
life  in  his  hand  for  the  rescue  of  his  fellow  man, 
or  who  does  some  daring  deed  for  the  good  of 
the  State,  or  the  safety  of  the  fatherland,  wins 
social  advantage  though  he  may  have  been 
reared  in  the  lowest  circles  of  society. 

8.  Vicarious  service.  The  man  or  woman 
who  gives  up  social  opportunities  for  the  sake 
of  service  to  others,  like  the  missionary,  the 
physician,  and  the  nurse,  has  always  won  a 
place  in  the  social  esteem  of  his  or  her  country- 
men, though  sometimes  the  coronation  has  been 
too  long  delayed.    John  Wesley,  Florence  Night- 


CLASS  CONSCIOUSNESS  47 

ingale,  and  Bishops  William  Taylor  and  James 
Thoburn  furnish  us  splendid  examples. 

These  are  some  of  the  more  important  fac- 
tors that  give  social  advantage,  but  there  is  a 
growing  social  consciousness  in  every  com- 
munity that  includes  the  humbler  factors  of 
everyday  tasks  well  performed.  So  we  are  com- 
ing to  see  that  anyone  who  does  a  requisite  part 
of  the  work  necessary  for  the  health,  happiness, 
and  safety  of  the  community  has  won  the  right 
to  our  respect  and  social  esteem,  whether  he  sit 
in  the  office  of  state,  the  professional  chair, 
whether  he  stand  in  the  place  of  the  captain  of 
industry,  the  captain  of  the  ship,  or  the  cap- 
tain of  the  army,  or  whether  he  be  the  humble 
citizen  doing  his  daily  tasks  as  the  scavenger  of 
the  city,  the  stoker  of  the  boilers,  or  the  private 
in  the  commissariat.  All  are  doing  a  part  of 
the  work  of  the  world  which  makes  our  social 
progress  possible,  and  should,  therefore,  have 
a  share  of  the  social  honors  and  esteem  that  we 
have  to  offer  as  a  reward. 

The  Sunday  school  and  other  institutions  of 
the  Christian  Church  are  doing  a  great  service 
in  keeping  open  the  doors  of  opportunity  that 
lead  to  social  progress,  and  nothing  will  con- 
tribute more  to  the  effectiveness  of  that  service 
than  the  knowledge  of  what  really  constitutes 
social  classes  and  what  are  some  of  the  factors 
that  give  social  advantage. 


48  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

Social  Cleavage 

When  we  use  this  term  with  reference  to  so- 
ciety we  do  not  mean  for  the  reader  to  infer 
that  we  believe  society  to  be  inorganic,  and  sub- 
ject to  the  laws  of  cleavage  as  the  term  is  used 
in  geology.  It  is  only  in  an  analogical  sense 
that  we  consider  society  as  capable  of  being 
split  up  into  groups  or  structures  in  the  same 
way  as  one  would  split  a  rock  for  building  pur- 
poses. It  is  true  that  in  race  differentiation  and 
in  countries  where  castes  are  formed  we  have  a 
stratification  of  society  almost  as  marked  as 
that  in  the  earth's  structure;  but  in  modern  so- 
ciety among  progressive  peoples,  especially 
under  democratic  forms  of  government,  we 
have  no  such  barriers  that  exclude  one  class 
from  another,  and  yet  we  have  that  principle 
of  social  differentiation  at  work  that  makes 
progress  and  nation-building  possible.  This  we 
call  social  cleavage.  You  may  have  a  rock  mass 
that  is  of  little  use  in  its  present  form  and  po- 
sition, but  by  understanding  its  lines  of  cleav- 
age you  may  utilize  it  in  structure  building  in 
any  place  or  in  any  form  most  desirable  and 
most  useful.  So  with  a  population  mass;  it 
seems  to  us  sometimes  a  useless  incumbrance 
in  the  savage  group,  the  teeming  wretches  of 
the  caste,  or  the  threatening  movement  of  the 
mob;  but  when  we  understand  how  men  may 


CLASS  CONSCIOUSNESS  49 

be  organized  and  grouped  in  cooperative  en- 
deavor, and  in  sympathetic  altruistic  service 
for  the  good  of  each  in  society,  we  see  how  it 
can  be  utilized  for  the  good  of  the  community. 
While  the  actual  lines  of  social  cleavage  may, 
not  be  visible  to  the  unthinking  in  a  population 
group,  yet  they  are  there  just  as  surely  as  in 
the  rock  mass  from  which  we  shape  the  blocks 
of  the  granite  or  marble  that  make  up  our  noble 
structures.  We  can  observe  this  in  a  new  set- 
tlement; out  of  the  population  mass  there  de- 
velops organized  and  orderly  society  because 
the  possibilities  of  social  cleavage  were  present 
in  the  population  mass. 

I  wish  it  understood  at  the  outset  that  social 
cleavage,  in  itself,  is  not  an  evil,  as  many  would 
suppose,  but  a  good  to  society  if  intelligently 
utilized  by  social  leadership.  The  real  difficulty 
in  society  is  not  in  the  fact  of  social  cleavage 
and  social  organization,  but,  rather,  in  social 
friction  and  social  conflict.  To  make  use  of  the 
analogy  a  little  further :  We  find  that  the  lines 
of  cleavage  and  the  utility  of  a  rock  mass  de- 
pend upon  the  process  of  rock  formation — 
the  way  the  structural  units  were  put  together. 
So  in  society,  the  utility  of  social  cleavage  de- 
pends upon  the  social  process  by  which  the  in- 
dividuals of  a  population  mass  are  related  to 
each  other  in  the  development  of  society  itself. 
If  men  are  taught  from  birth  to  despise  the 


50  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEEK 

members  of  another  group,  as  under  the  caste 
system,  then  it  will  be  almost  impossible  to  de- 
velop an  organized  democratic  government  and 
society  among  them.  If  men  of  any  country  are 
taught  from  childhood  to  consider  themselves 
as  members  of  a  "c/a5s,"  and  to  despise  as  ene- 
mies those  below  them  in  the  scale  of  life,  then 
it  will  be  impossible  to  avoid  social  friction, 
class  hatred,  and  class  conflict.  Social  cleavage 
is  thus  changed  to  social  stratification,  and  we 
get  as  a  result  social  barriers  set  up  between 
classes,  because  class  consciousness  has  de- 
veloped faster  than  social  consciousness.  These 
facts  give  to  the  Church  and  Sunday  school  an 
unusual  educational  opportunity;  for,  as  we 
shall  see  later  in  the  discussion,  Christian  edu- 
cation is  the  only  force  that  can  develop  a  so- 
cial consciousness  in  the  individual  and  in  the 
group  that  will  be  able  intelligently  to  make 
use  of  the  great  law  of  social  cleavage  in  de- 
veloping the  ideal  society. 

Social  Baeriers 

When  we  speak  of  social  barriers  between 
various  groups  of  population  it  is  only  in  a 
metaphorical  sense  that  we  use  the  term,  for 
the  life  of  the  community  is  a  whole  that  can- 
not be  regarded  as  actually  set  off  by  fences  or 
walls.  It  would  be  nearer  the  truth  if  we  spoke 
of  these  barriers  as  terraced,  for  we  find  it  very 


CLASS  CONSCIOUSNESS  51 

easy  to  slip  from  one  social  plane  to  another, 
as  it  is  possible  by  ambition  and  energy  to 
ascend. 

Of  course  in  a  country  like  India,  where  the 
caste  system  has  long  been  established  and 
recognized,  these  barriers  seem  absolutely  fixed 
for  life — as  absolute  as  that  gulf  between  Dives 
and  Lazarus ;  and  to  some  extent  in  a  monarchy 
these  barriers  are  more  or  less  fixed  between 
the  ruling  class  and  the  titled  classes,  and  those 
beneath  them  in  the  social  scale,  yet  it  is  quite 
possible  in  a  constitutional  monarchy  for  dynas- 
ties to  change,  or  be  set  aside,  and  for  a  man 
to  rise  from  the  peasant  to  the  ruling  class. 
But  in  a  republic,  such  as  our  own,  these  bar- 
riers are  in  no  sense  fixed  as  yet,  these  terraced 
walls  may  be  scaled  by  the  ambitious  when 
righteous  endeavor  is  persisted  in,  or  when  the 
gracious  hand  of  inheritance  is  reached  down 
to  help  one  up,  so  that  it  is  not  unusual  in  this 
country  for  young  men  and  young  women  to 
rise  from  the  humblest  circles  of  the  struggling 
masses  to  the  highest  j^ositions  of  social  dis- 
tinction among  the  truly  elite.  On  the  other 
hand,  it  is  equally  true  that  the  man  who  does 
not  rightly  appreciate  the  position  that  he  holds 
by  inheritance,  or  has  reached  by  endeavor,  may 
easily  slip  to  the  bottom  of  the  social  scale,  and 
even  lower,  into  the  very  pit  of  the  depraved, 
by  social  sinning. 


52  THE  SOCIAX  ENGINEER 

It  frequently  occurs  in  modern  American  so- 
ciety that  many  families  through  financial  suc- 
cess are  prematurely  placed  in  social  positions 
for  which  they  are  by  education  and  training 
unfitted,  and  hence  they  are  an  embarrassment 
to  themselves  as  well  as  to  their  associates,  and 
such  have  won  for  themselves  the  title  of  the 
''poor  rich."  Some  of  them  rightfully  deserve 
such  a  title,  because  they  usually  advertise  the 
fact  by  the  loudness  of  their  dress  as  well  as 
by  the  boisterousness  of  their  speech.  On  the 
other  hand,  there  are  those  in  every  community 
who  are  well  born,  well  bred,  and  truly  cultured 
who,  through  struggle,  misfortune,  or  circum- 
stances over  which  they  have  no  control,  are 
living  on  the  verge  of  need,  and  whom  we  right- 
fully designate  as  the  "rich  poor,"  and  in  a 
more  scientific  classification  we  could  number 
them  among  the  truly  elite. 

We  find,  therefore,  that  social  cleavage 
based  upon  natural  distinctions  among  men  is 
a  good,  and  makes  social  progress  possible, 
while  artificial  distinctions  tend  to  social  strati- 
fication, and  are  a  drag  to  progress,  and  usually 
result  in  social  upheavals,  cataclysms,  and  so- 
cial revolution. 

Social  Conflict 

Social  conflict  takes  place  in  society  after  so- 
cial groups  have  been  formed,  and  is  not  an 


CLASS  CONSCIOUSNESS  53 

unmixed  evil,  for  it  may  result  in  social  prog- 
ress. In  fact,  some  sociologists  have  based 
their  theory  of  society  upon  this  principle.^  It 
is  claimed  that  conflict  either  results  in  con- 
quest, thus  giving  the  stronger  a  better  chance, 
or  it  results  in  a  combination  of  smaller  and 
weaker  groups  against  the  strong  until  we 
reach  the  struggle  of  equals,  which  must  ulti- 
mately end  in  toleration ;  and  when  equals  come 
to  tolerate  each  other  they  are  not  long  in  de- 
veloping a  consciousness  of  kind  that  will  re- 
sult in  sympathy,  and  later  in  pleasurable  as- 
sociation. So  there  exists  the  hope  that  conflict 
between  nations  will  ultimately  result  in  the 
federation  of  the  world  and  the  brotherhood  of 
man.  But  in  the  process  there  is  the  enormous 
waste  of  life  and  substance,  and  men  are  asking 
seriously  if  there  is  not  some  other  and  better 
way  to  reach  this  supreme  goal  of  society  which 
Christianity  has  contributed  to  the  world  as  a 
workable  program.  Why  do  we  still  have  social 
conflict?  We  think  of  the  wars  of  history  and 
of  the  present,  of  race  antagonisms  and  class 
conflicts  between  groui)s  of  the  same  race — 
actual  warfare,  which  we  name  in  milder  terms, 
such  as  strikes,  boycotts,  lockouts,  struggles 
between  organized  and  unorganized  labor,  be- 
tween organized  employers,  organized  em- 
ployees, competition  as  destructive  of  values 

1  Gumplowitz,  "Der  Rasenkampf." 


54  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEEE 

in  inanj^  instances  as  war  or  fire  or  famine. 
On  the  other  hand,  we  see  groups  in  conflict  be- 
cause of  the  moral  struggle  involved  and  the 
moral  values  that  are  at  stake — conflicts  of  re- 
ligious groups  for  the  doctrines  they  hold  as 
essential  to  salvation.  Why  all  this!  we  may 
ask.  Is  there  no  better  way?  It  is  easy  to  give 
a  philosophical  answer,  but  it  is  quite  another 
thing  to  solve  the  actual  problem. 

The  reason  is  largely  one  of  consciousness. 
One  of  the  chief  causes  of  social  conflict  is  the 
fact  that  we  develop  class  consciousness  faster 
than  we  do  social  sympathy,  or  what  I  term  the 
true  social  consciousness,  that  takes  account  of 
moral  obligations  and  responsibilities  for  the 
other  group  whether  strong  or  weak.  A  second 
cause  of  social  conflict  is  the  passion  in  the  hu- 
man heart  for  social  justice.  Now,  the  two  go 
together;  so  long  as  you  have  class  conscious- 
ness you  will  have  social  injustice;  and  social 
conflict  is  the  result.  But,  on  the  other  hand, 
the  passion  for  social  justice  develops  the  social 
consciousness  by  seeking  to  help  the  weak  and 
defend  the  good,  and  hence  the  tendency  is  for 
groups  to  develop  a  wider  reaching  social  con- 
sciousness until  cooperation  has  displaced  con- 
flict and  peaceful  relations  result. 

Now,  this  seems  to  leave  us  in  a  sort  of 
dilemma  as  to  how  we  are  going  to  succeed  in 
maintaining  peace  in  orderly,  progressive  so- 


CLASS  CONSCIOUSNESS  55 

ciety.  It  is  just  here  that  I  wish  to  put  em- 
phasis upon  Christian  education  in  the  Church 
and  Sunday  school  as  the  chief  factor  in  the 
solution  of  this  perplexing  problem  of  to-day. 

Cheistian  Education  and  Society 

One  of  the  best  examples  of  the  development 
of  social  cleavage  of  the  right  sort  is  to  be  found 
in  our  educational  system  in  the  United  States, 
and  especially  in  a  college,  high  school,  or  a 
graded  and  progressive  Sunday  school.  Here 
we  have  the  graded  system  that  tends  to  sepa- 
rate the  pupils  in  class-conscious  groups,  while 
at  the  same  time  there  is  developed  what  we 
call  ''college  spirit"  that  unites  all  in  one  larger 
group,  or  the  denominational  spirit  that  unites 
all  the  various  groups  of  one  Sunday  school  and 
church  into  a  conscious  social  group  of  larger 
dimensions. 

The  evil  result  in  the  history  of  Christian 
education  under  denominationalism  has  been 
the  tendency  to  denominational  caste,  or  re- 
ligious social  stratification,  so  that  instead  of 
being  a  help  to  religious  progress  it  has  been 
a  fruitful  source  of  religious  strife,  intoler- 
ance, and  bigotry.  But  in  modern  times  the 
spirit  of  brotherhood  and  federation  seems 
to  have  well-nigh  removed  all  the  barriers; 
so  that  it  is  a  common  thing  to-day  to  see 
the    members    of   the    various    denominations 


56  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

yoked  together  in  the  band  of  volunteers 
for  the  evangelization  of  the  world.  Here,  then, 
it  seems  to  me,  is  the  supreme  opportunity  of 
the  Church  and  Sunday  school — ^to  instruct 
the  millions  of  the  most  susceptible  youth  of 
our  generation  so  that  they  may  see  the  value 
of  social  cleavage  as  a  part  of  the  social  process, 
and  at  the  same  time  be  taught  the  meaning  of 
social  justice  that  requires  of  them  enlistment 
in  the  warfare  against  organized  vice  and  sin 
and  crime;  and,  further,  they  should  be  given 
that  view  of  society  that  will  enable  them  to  see 
the  obligations  we  bear  to  one  another  in  the 
great  social  fabric  of  which  we  are  but  a  part, 
a  social  consciousness  that  will  overcome  class 
consciousness  and  lead  them  to  see  the  rights  of 
others  in  the  fields  of  opportunity. 

Much  of  the  conflict  in  society  to-day  is  the 
result  of  inadequate  notions  of  honor  in  social 
service.  If  men  could  be  led  to  see  the  dignity 
of  toil  wherever  honestly  expended  for  the  pub- 
lic weal,  they  would  be  so  moved  by  the  sense 
of  justice  that  every  man  who  does  a  necessary 
part  of  the  work  that  contributes  to  the  life, 
health,  and  happiness  of  society  would  receive 
not  only  his  rightful  due  of  the  honors  society 
bestows,  but  would  receive  also  a  larger  share 
of  the  profits  of  social  production. 

The  evils  in  society  will  never  be  removed  by 
simply  crying  down  the  conflicts  that  may  be 


CLASS  CONSCIOUSNESS  57 

only  a  result  and  not  a  cause,  when  the  real  task 
we  have  to  perform  is  the  removal  of  the  causes 
of  these  results  we  so  vigorously  decry.  The 
industrial  problems  of  to-day  will  never  be 
solved  by  running  down  organized  labor,  nor 
by  abusing  the  organizations  of  capital,  but, 
rather,  by  giving  to  all  men  the  facts  that  will 
arouse  their  innate  sense  of  justice,  and  lead 
them  to  deal  justly  with  their  fellows.  But  you 
ask, ' '  How  can  this  be  done  f "  It  is  not  so  diffi- 
cult as  it  seems,  for  we  are  apt  to  become  dis- 
couraged at  the  bigness  of  a  task  because  we 
see  it  as  a  whole,  when,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  our 
part  in  the  process  of  performance  may  be  but 
a  simple  part  of  it  all.  For  example,  tell  your 
class  on  Sunday  not  only  the  precepts  of  Jesus 
that  bear  upon  the  theme,  but  tell  them  also  of 
some  concrete  case  you  know  of  in  your  own 
community.  Tell  the  city  boy  how  the  farmer 
boy  must  go  without  many  good  things  because 
the  unscrupulous  commission  man  cheated  his 
father  out  of  nearly  all  the  profits  of  his  sea- 
son's toil  in  raising  his  crop  for  market;  or  tell 
the  boy  in  the  country  how  some  poor  man  in 
the  city  was  robbed  of  his  property  by  some 
unscrupulous  ''loan  shark''  when  he  was  in 
need,  because  he  was  unable  to  push  his  case 
with  any  hope  of  success  in  the  courts.  Take 
your  class  for  an  outing  and  show  them  the 
actual   groups    of   living   human   beings    that 


58  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

make  possible  social  classification,  cleavage,  and 
conflict.  In  fact,  when  we  come  to  look  about 
us,  the  easiest  task  we  have  in  the  Sunday  school 
and  in  the  day  school  and  college  is  to  give  the 
student  a  concrete  example  of  what  we  mean 
by  our  words.  It  is  not  easy,  however,  unless 
the  teacher  himself  knows  what  the  facts  are, 
and  the  reason  he  does  not  know  them  is  not 
because  the  facts  are  hidden,  but  because  he  has 
not  trained  himself  to  discover  and  to  remem- 
ber them. 

Jesus 's  life  and  method  were  successful  be- 
cause he  lived  with  the  people  the  things  he 
was  constantly  teaching  them.  The  teacher 
and  the  social  leader  in  every  field  will  succeed 
likewise  when  he  learns  to  teach  others  by  self- 
mastery  of  the  truths  he  wishes  to  impart. 

There  are  a  number  of  interesting  problems 
that  would  logically  come  under  this  heading 
for  discussion,  such  as  race  prejudice,  the  Negro 
problem  in  America,  the  labor  problem,  pauper- 
ism, and  the  like,  but  we  defer  them  until  later. 
It  is  possible  in  such  discussion  as  this  to  ignore 
the  value  of  the  individual  as  a  factor  in  so- 
ciety, so  in  our  next  chapter  we  will  consider 
the  social  efficiency  of  the  individual. 


CHAPTER  V 

THE   SOCIAL  EFFICIENCY  OF  THE   INDIVIDUAL 

We  pointed  out  in  the  last  chapter  how  it 
was  possible  for  us  in  the  discussion  of  social 
classification,  cleavage,  and  conflict  to  ignore 
the  value  of  the  individual  as  a  factor  in  so- 
ciety. We  therefore  take  up  in  this  chapter  the 
topic  of  the  "Social  Efficiency  of  the  Indi- 
vidual. ' ' 

Some  time  ago  a  student  in  one  of  our  lead- 
ing universities  wrote  me  a  letter  of  inquiry  con- 
cerning several  practical  problems  in  current 
sociological  discussion.  Among  other  things  it 
was  asked  if  it  were  not  true  that  to-day  em- 
phasis is  being  placed  upon  the  endeavor  to 
recover  the  great  man  in  society  rather  than 
upon  the  questions  of  the  mass,  or  the  power 
of  environment.  In  replying  to  this  question  I 
said,  among  other  things,  that  it  is  true  we  are 
looking  to-day  for  the  great  man  in  society,  but 
it  is  also  true  that  we  measure  him,  neverthe- 
less, in  terms  of  social  value,  and  that  his  effi- 
ciency in  society  as  an  individual  always  de- 
pends upon  the  fact  that  he  has  in  some  way 
achieved  social  esteem  by  the  service  he  has  ren- 
dered to  society ;  and  this  service  is  possible  of 

59 


GO  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

achievement  because  he  has  developed  a  social 
consciousnss  in  advance  of  the  social  conscious- 
ness of  his  fellows  representing  the  group,  and 
also  because  his  will  is  controlled  by  social  mo- 
tives rather  than  by  selfish  ones,  and,  further, 
because  such  a  man  is  in  a  real  sense  the  prod- 
uct of  his  age,  and  the  society  he  serves,  plus 
that  element  of  personality  which  we  designate 
as  freedom  of  the  will,  self-determination,  or 
the  power  of  initiative. 

In  this  day  of  fads  in  social  discussion,  and 
in  social  legislation  and  social  organization,  of 
socialistic  theories,  of  socialistic  parties  in 
politics,  one  is  apt  to  become  bewildered,  and 
from  the  viewpoint  of  the  individual  is  apt  to 
ask:  ^'Who's  who?"  and  ''What's  what?" 
"What  is  the  individual,  anyway?"  I  propose, 
therefore,  in  this  discussion  to  state  certain 
fundamental  questions  concerning  the  efficiency 
of  the  individual  in  society ;  to  give  certain  cate- 
gorical answers  to  those  questions,  to  give  an 
explanation  of  my  answers,  and  to  show,  in  con- 
clusion, how  the  Church  and  Sunday  school  and 
other  religious  social  agencies  may  develop  the 
social  efficiency  sought  in  the  individuals  com- 
ing under  their  instruction. 

Questions 

1.  What  is  the  individual  ''socius,"  or  the 
individual  as  we  find  him  in  society? 


SOCIAL  EFFICIENCY  OF  INDIVIDUALS     61 

2.  What  is  social  efficiency  in  the  individual? 

3.  What  are  the  elements  of  sncli  efficiency  in 
the  character  of  such  an  individual? 

4.  What  are  the  factors  that  give  the  indi- 
vidual in  society  such  elements  of  character? 

The  answers  to  these  questions  will  furnish 
us  not  only  with  useful  knowledge  with  respect 
to  the  members  of  a  social  group  but  will  also 
furnish  us  a  program  by  which  we,  as  preachers 
and  teachers,  may  do  effective  work  in  making 
society  better  through  our  influence  upon  the 
individuals,  and  the  social  groups  as  well,  that 
come  under  our  instruction. 

Answebs 

It  will  serve  our  purpose  better  to  give  first 
a  simple  categorical  answer  to  each  of  the  ques- 
tions just  given  above,  and  then  to  give  a  more 
extended  meaning  of  the  terms  employed  in 
these  answers. 

1.  In  reply  to  the  first  question  I  would  say 
as  follows:  The  individual  '^socius'*  is  the 
product  of  heredity  (used  in  its  broadest  sense) 
and  environment  plus  personality. 

2.  By  social  efficiency  we  mean  the  ability  of 
the  individual  in  society  to  express  himself  by 
activities  that  may  be  measured  in  terms  of 
social  values. 

3.  The  elements  of  character  of  such  an  effi- 
cient individual  are  those  physical  and  psy- 


62  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

chical  abilities  which  win  for  him  the  highest 
social  esteem  and  enable  him  to  perform  for 
society  the  greatest  good. 

4.  The  factors  that  produce  such  elements  of 
character  are  those  physical  or  psychical  forces 
and  powers  available  in  the  life  of  the  individual 
for  his  highest  development  and  use. 

For  the  most  of  my  intelligent  readers  this 
would  be  sufficient,  merely  to  state  the  ques- 
tions and  answers  as  above,  and  leave  it  to  the 
reader  to  work  out  in  detail  their  meaning.  But 
words  and  terms  do  not  always  have  the  same 
content  and  meaning  for  the  different  individ- 
uals using  them,  so  we  deem  it  necessary  to  give 
some  words  of  explanation,  which  we  hope  will 
lend  additional  interest  to  the  subject  under 
consideration. 

Explanations 

1.  When  we  behold  a  great  man  in  society, 
majestic  in  his  proportions,  it  is  not  a  sufficient 
answer  to  the  inquiring  mind  to  say,  ''Thou 
hast  made  him  a  little  lower  than  God  and 
crowned  him  with  glory  and  honor";  we  want 
to  know  something  of  the  process  by  which  such 
characters  are  produced.  It  is  not  enough  to 
simply  say, ' '  God  made  him  great, ' '  for  we  want 
to  discover  some  of  the  agencies  that  have  been 
used  in  the  process,  and  know  our  relation  to 
them,  if  we  are  to  be  coworkers  with  God  in  the 


SOCIAL  EFFICIENCY  OF  INDIVIDUALS     63 

molding  and  fashioning  of  human  character. 
Even  when  we  see  a  thoroughbred  horse  or  a 
good  cow  with  a  record  we  want  to  know  some- 
thing of  how  they  get  the  breed.  The  taunt  of 
Cassius  to  Brutus  concerning  Caesar  may  be- 
come for  us  a  method  of  serious  inquiry  when 
we  consider  the  greatness  of  a  Moses,  a  Paul,  a 
Lincoln,  or  of  any  other  great  man  of  the  pres- 
ent who  is  doing  great  things  for  humanity. 
We  should  hnoiv  upon  what  meat  they  feed,  that 
they  have  grown  so  great,  in  order  that  we  may 
be  most  effective  in  the  service  we  can  render 
for  human  betterment. 

If  the  individual  is  a  product  of  society 
through  the  forces  of  heredity,  environment, 
and  of  personal  freedom,  it  is,  therefore,  of  the 
utmost  importance  that  we  know  the  laws  of 
heredity  in  the  transmission,  from  parent  to 
offspring,  of  physical,  psychical,  and  moral 
traits  that  shall  vitally  affect  the  efficiency  of 
the  adult  life.  We  should  know  also  the  great 
social  laws  of  environing  conditions  repre- 
sented by  the  terms  ''imitation,"  "opposition," 
and  "adaptation,"  and  our  power  to  control 
them  through  education.^  We  should  also 
understand  the  range  and  limitations  of  per- 
sonal choice  and  the  power  of  initiative  and 
self-control.     We  are  just  beginning  to  learn 


1  For  a  fuller  explanation,  see  "Social  Aspects  of  Religious  Insti- 
tutions," by  Edwin  L.  Earp,  pp.  5-7. 


64  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

how  social  man  really  is  in  his  entire  make-up. 
If  you  isolate  him  from  society,  he  soon  loses 
his  reason,  as  is  shown  by  imprisonment  in  soli- 
tary confinement,  and  in  employment  like  the 
isolated  lighthouse  tending,  where  now  they 
place  two  together  to  avoid  insanity,  and  it  is 
said  that  even  this  social  circle  is  so  small  that 
both  are  apt  to  become  insane.*  It  is  also 
shown  in  the  study  of  suicide.  Professor  Ross 
says:  ''Few  commit  suicide  from  physical  an- 
guish, from  pain,  cold,  or  hunger,  A  man  is 
more  likely  to  renounce  life  when  some  catas- 
trophe happens  to  the  image  of  himself  he  is 
accustomed  to  see  in  the  eyes  of  others.'*  .  .  . 
"Again,  there  is  nothing  like  social  relations 
to  keep  down  suicide.  Isolated,  the  individual 
who  meets  with  shipwreck  lets  go  of  life;  knit 
up  with  others,  he  is  supported  by  sympathy 
and  encouragement,  and  hangs  on."^  Again, 
the  fact  is  shown  from  records  that  from  three 
to  five  times  as  many  single  as  married  per- 
sons commit  suicide.  No  individual  of  real  value 
is  isolated  from  society.  Even  the  ''wild  man 
of  Borneo,"  of  whom  the  college  students  some- 
times sing,  is  a  rare  exception,  and  the  fact  that 
he  "has  just  come  to  town"  is  proof  that  even 
he  is  not  entirely  devoid  of  social  instincts. 


1  See  Publications  of  the  American  Sociological  Society,   vol.  i, 
1906,  Discussion  by  Mrs.  Gilman. 

2  See  op.  cit.,  p.  102. 


SOCIAL  EFFICIENCY  OF  INDIVIDUALS     65 

2.  In  explaining  our  second  proposition — that 
social  efficiency  is  the  ability  of  the  individual 
''socius"  to  express  himself  by  activities  which 
are  measured  in  terms  of  social  values — we  are 
not  interested,  especially,  in  all  the  phases  of 
human  activity  covered  by  this  definition,  but, 
rather,  with  that  kind  of  social  efficiency  that 
may  be  measured  in  terms  of  moral,  spiritual, 
and  economic  advantage  to  society — whether 
expressed  in  a  qualitative  or  quantitative  way. 
Now,  it  must  be  understood  at  the  outset  that 
society  is  not  always  conscious  of  such  ability, 
nor  does  it  always  measure  it  contempora- 
neously with  the  life  of  the  individual  possess- 
ing and  expressing  it.  For  example,  take  the 
life  of  Jesus.  It  is  growing  in  social  estimate 
with  every  century,  and  men  like  the  writers  of 
the  American  Constitution,  or  Abraham  Lin- 
coln, receive  more  social  esteem  to-day  than 
ever  before,  because  society  is  more  and  more 
conscious  of  the  social  value  of  their  deeds.  So 
with  the  religious  reformers  like  Savonarola, 
Calvin,  Luther,  Knox,  the  Wesleys,  and  the 
missionary  pioneers  of  every  century.  It  is 
difficult  to  determine  the  exact  degree  of  in- 
dividual social  efficiency  when  questions  of 
honor  and  social  standing  are  raised.  For  il- 
lustration, take  the  life  of  the  stoker  on  a  battle- 
ship as  compared  with  that  of  the  captain  on 
the  bridge,  the  skilled  workman  as  compared 


66  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

with  the  contractor  or  archiect,  the  worth  of  the 
city  scavengers  to  the  health  and  happiness  of 
the  people  as  compared  with  the  work  of  the 
sanitary  officers,  the  mayor  and  aldermen  of  the 
city  government.  No  one  can  determine  off- 
hand the  relative  value  of  the  activities  of  such 
men  without  considering  all  the  factors  in  the 
process  of  keeping  the  city  well  governed,  or 
the  battleship  in  efficient  service,  or  the  build- 
ing complete  for  the  uses  for  which  it  was  de- 
signed and  erected.  The  ability  of  any  indi- 
vidual to  serve  his  age  lies  in  reality  in  the  fact 
of  his  possessing,  in  some  measure  at  least,  a 
social  consciousness.  Without  it  he  may  do  the 
directed  work  of  society  that  may  be  of  im- 
portance, but  he  will  be  in  no  sense  a  leader 
without  it.  It  is  not  alone  in  what  the  initial 
activity  is  in  itself,  but,  rather,  in  the  cumula- 
tive and  multiple  effect,  by  wise  social  direction, 
upon  the  activities  of  others  that  we  are  to  find 
the  social  worth  of  the  individual.  In  other 
words,  a  man's  social  efficiency  consists  not 
alone  in  what  he  can  do  himself  directly  for  so- 
ciety, but  also  in  what  he  can  get  others  as  in- 
dividuals and  organized  groups  to  do  for  the 
good  of  society  at  large.  Such  efficiency  of  the 
individual  is  ideal  when  every  act,  consciously 
or  unconsciously,  contributes  to  the  good  of 
self,  offspring,  and  society  as  a  whole. 

Another  fact  must  not  be  overlooked.     The 


SOCIAL  EFFICIENCY  OF  INDIVIDUALS     G7 

individual  to  receive  the  highest  social  estimate 
of  worth  must  have  the  esteem  of  his  fellows  as 
well  as  ability  if  he  would  be  most  efficient  in 
service  to  society.  We  could  name  men  living 
to-day  who  have  rendered  able  service  to  so- 
ciety and  possess  ability,  but  who  could  not,  if 
they  desired,  render  the  same  service  to  society 
because  they  have  lost  the  esteem  of  the  people 
at  large.  We  have  seen  in  every  community, 
especially  in  church  and  Sunday  school  work, 
persons  possessing  ability,  yet  lacking  in  the 
confidence  of  the  people;  like  a  pretty,  noble- 
looking  horse  my  father  owned  once  that  could 
pull  a  mighty  load  on  occasions,  but  would  in- 
variably balk  on  a  hill  when  you  needed  him 
most.  We  could  never  depend  upon  him — he 
was  worthless  for  team  work. 

3.  In  reference  to  our  third  proposition. 
Here  we  are  more  specific  in  stating  the  ele- 
ments of  character  of  such  an  individual  as  we 
are  considering — his  physical  and  psychical 
abilities.  Wlien  we  consider  some  of  the  great 
men  who  have  done  the  greatest  things  for  hu- 
manity we  find  that  most  of  them  were  men  of 
physical  endurance  as  well  of  psychical  pre- 
eminence. Moses,  while  a  student  in  Egypt, 
was  athletic  enough  to  do  to  death  a  brutal 
Egyptian  taskmaster  and  brickmaker,  and  when 
one  hundred  and  twenty  years  of  age  he  was  a 
mountain  climber  with  an  eye  like  the  eagle's. 


G8  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEEK 

iindimmed.  Paul,  in  spite  of  his  * '  thorn  in  the 
flesh,"  was  able  to  stand  beatings  with  rods, 
contentions  with  beasts,  shipwreck  at  sea,  and 
when  cast  out  of  the  city  for  dead  upon  the  rub- 
bish heap,  he  got  up  and  went  to  preaching 
again  the  same  day.  John  Wesley,  after  stand- 
ing the  scoldings  and  physical  violence  of  a 
termagant,  could  rise  at  four  in  the  morning, 
preach  from  four  to  six  times  a  day,  and  write 
on  an  average  a  book  a  week.  Abraham  Lincoln 
could  in  his  youth  split  rails  all  day  on  a  diet  of 
salt  pork  and  hominy,  and  our  active  ex-Presi- 
dent Theodore  Roosevelt,  warrior,  statesman, 
reformer,  writer,  and  peacemaker,  could  never 
accomplish  his  great  tasks  for  the  good  of  hu- 
manity if  he  had  not  a  splendid  physique  made 
rugged  by  strenuous  activity  in  the  saddle,  on 
the  chase,  and  on  the  tennis  court.  But  apart 
from  these  physical  elements  of  character,  there 
must  be  those  psychical  abilities  that  give  in- 
tellectual grasp  of  social  problems,  and  control 
of  social  forces,  that  can  formulate  plans,  or- 
ganize campaigns,  and  direct  great  governmen- 
tal policies;  tactfulness  and  skill  in  managing 
men  so  as  to  avoid  discord  and  social  friction. 

4.  In  explaining  our  fourth  proposition — the 
factors  that  give  the  individual  such  elements 
of  character  and  ability — it  remains  for  us  sim- 
ply to  enumerate  some  of  the  physical  and 
psychical  forces  and  powers  that  are  available 


SOCIAL  EFFICIENCY  OF  INDIVIDUALS     69 

in  the  life  of  the  individual  for  his  highest  de- 
veloj^ment  and  social  efficiency.  The  physical 
factors,  such  as  light,  heat,  electricity,  radio- 
activity, and  gravity;  the  psychical  factors, 
such  as  love,  anger,  sympathy,  cooperation,  and 
consciousness  of  kind,  when  related  intelligently 
to  the  human  will  in  society,  are  sources  of 
energy  that  may  be  put  to  social  uses.  But 
added  to  these  are  those  physical  and  psychical 
poivers  represented  in  the  products  of  applied 
science,  and  by  the  men  and  organizations  about 
us  in  hmnan  society;  and  also  the  spiritual 
powers  available  to  the  man  of  prayer,  and  to 
the  needy  before  they  cry,  all  come  within  the 
range  of  individual  activity,  and  may  be  so  con- 
trolled and  directed  by  the  human  will  as  to 
make  the  individual  a  social  factor  of  the  great- 
est efficiency.  When  we  say  available  in  the  life 
of  the  individual  ^^socius/^  we,  of  course,  mean 
only  in  a  relative  sense,  for  no  physical,  psy- 
chical, or  spiritual  force  or  power  is  available 
to  the  man  who  is  without  the  knowledge  of 
them  or  their  uses.  When  we  look  over  the 
great  field  of  human  struggle  and  endeavor  we 
find  many  things  to  encourage  us,  but  there  are 
also  many  discouragements  in  vast  numbers  of 
individuals  and  individual  groups  that  are  not 
only  without  social  efficiency,  but  are,  on  the 
contrary,  a  drag  to  social  progress.  We  see 
men  who  mean  well,  but  do  blundering  things; 


70  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

others  who  know  better,  but  lack  the  will  to  do. 
It  remains  for  us  to  consider  how  this  efficiency 
is  to  be  utilized  in  the  various  fields  of  human 
need,  and  the  part  the  Church  and  Sunday 
school  may  perform  in  bringing  these  facts  to 
the  knowledge  of  the  thousands  of  our  young 
people  who  may  become  socially  efficient  in 
carrying  on  the  world's  work  to-morrow. 

It  remains  for  us  to  show  that  the  subject  is 
an  educational  problem  and  how  the  Sunday 
school  and  Church  may  cooperate  with  other 
educational  institutions  in  the  development  of 
the  individual  for  efficiency  in  specific  fields  of 
social  service,  and  how  this  efficiency  can  be 
utilized  in  the  various  fields  of  human  need. 

An  Educational.  Problem 

From  our  viewpoint  the  individual  is  not 
educated  when  he  leaves  the  school  or  college 
with  a  certain  amount  of  knowledge  about 
himself  and  the  things  about  him,  but,  rather, 
when  he  has  become  related  to  the  actual  life 
of  society  in  a  vital  way  by  being  able  to  do 
things  through  the  utilization  of  the  forces 
and  powers  physical  and  social  over  which  he 
has  control.  Mr.  James  P.  Monroe  stated  the 
case  in  a  very  forceful  way  in  the  opening  ad- 
dress before  the  Social  Education  Congress  in 
Tremont  Temple,  Boston,  November  30,  1906, 
in  answering  the  question  as  to  what  social  edu- 


SOCIAL  EFFICIENCY  OF  INDIVIDUALS     71 

cation  really  is.  He  said:  *' Emphatically,  it  is 
not  mere  book-learning.  It  must  of  necessity 
involve  also  hand-learning  (or  manual  skill), 
bread-and-butter-learning  (or  industrial  effi- 
ciency), head-learning  (or  what  we  Yankees  call 
'gumption'),  discipline-learning  (or  self-con- 
trol), leadership-learning  (or  executive  ability), 
fellowship-learning  (or  good  citizenship),  and, 
above  all,  ethical  learning  (or  fundamental  mo- 
rality). Social  education  does  not  permit  a 
youth  to  drift  into  an  occupation;  it  fits  him 
for  some  industry  best  suited  to  his  powers. 
Social  education  does  not  leave  a  boy  to  pick 
up  his  ideas  of  citizenship  from  barrooms 
and  ward  heelers;  it  organizes  every  com- 
munity into  a  local  town  meeting,  to  teach 
and  foster  real  self-government.  Social  educa- 
tion does  not  place  the  family  on  one  side  and 
the  school  on  the  other,  competing  for  author- 
ity ;  it  leads  the  school  to  understand  the  family 
and  the  family  to  understand  the  school,  so  that 
each  may  encourage,  strengthen,  and  supple- 
ment the  other.  Social  education  does  not 
ignore  foul  sanitary  conditions,  does  not  shut 
its  eyes  to  known  moral  evils ;  it  insists  that  the 
first  duty  of  the  school  is  to  establish  a  sound 
body  and  a  wholesome  mind.  Finally,  social 
education  does  not  let  the  bugbear  of  sectarian- 
ism stand  in  the  way  of  leading  every  school- 
child  into  the  presence  of  Almighty  God.    And 


72  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

these  pressing,  these  insistent,  these  life-and- 
death  problems  of  making  every  boy  and  girl — 
physically,  mentally,  industrially,  socially,  and 
morally — into  the  best  man  or  woman  possible, 
are  not  the  business  of  the  teacher  alone,  are 
not  academic  questions  to  be  discussed  in  doc- 
tors '  theses.  They  are  your  business  and  mine, 
to  be  seriously  undertaken  here  and  now. 
Never  before  were  youth  so  well  trained  men- 
tally as  they  are  at  present;  but  seldom  before 
have  they  been  so  ill  prepared  socially  as  they 
find  themselves  to-day."^ 

From  these  statements  in  answer  to  what 
social  education  is,  we  observe  that  the  devel- 
opment of  the  socially  efficient  individual  in- 
volves not  only  the  theoretical  training  of 
the  schools,  but  also  the  actual  utilization  of  the 
forces  and  powers  available  in  the  life  of  the 
individual  in  relation  to  all  the  factors  of 
the  community  life;  it  involves  doing  things  as 
well  as  knowing  things. 

Social.  Efficiency  Utilized 

When  we  come  to  study  the  lives  of  those  who 
have  done  things  that  have  amounted  to  some- 
thing for  society,  we  find  that  most  of  them  have 
been  devoted  to  some  specific  field  of  social  serv- 
ice, and  that  back  of  it  all  was  an  earnest  moral 
purpose  which  received  its  initial  impulse,  in 

>  See  Social  Educational  Quarterly,  for  March,  1907,  p.  3. 


SOCIAL  EFFICIENCY  OF  INDIVIDUALS     7?> 

most  cases,  from  the  teachings  of  religious 
truths  as  expressed  in  the  Bible,  and  in  the  lives 
of  men  who  were  directed  by  the  Spirit  of  the 
Master.  Social  efficiency  as  we  have  defined  it 
may  be  utilized: 

1.  In  the  field  of  government — in  city.  State, 
and  nation.  Men  have  not  always  been  found 
capable  when  tasks  of  government  were  thrust 
upon  them  by  custom  of  hereditary  rulership, 
or  by  the  whims  of  popular  suffrage,  because 
they  had  not  been  socially  trained  for  such 
tasks.  Men  have  often  utilized  their  powers  in 
governing  in  the  interests  of  themselves  and 
their  friends  or  business  associates  rather  than 
in  the  interests  of  all  the  people,  and  especially 
the  oppressed,  who  most  needed  their  sympathy 
and  help.  We  have  seen  examples  of  this  in 
republics  as  well  as  in  monarchies  and  despot- 
isms, in  modern  cities  as  well  as  in  those  of 
mediaeval  times.  There  is  no  field  that  offers 
the  individual,  socially  trained,  a  greater  oppor- 
tunity for  service  than  the  modern  American 
city.  There  is  no  field  of  government  where 
social  efficiency  is  more  in  need. 

2.  In  legislation  and  administration.  Many 
of  our  laws  have  become  obsolete,  or  have  been 
declared  unconstitutional,  or  have  been  dis- 
obeyed or  denounced  as  unjust,  because  men  in 
legislative  halls  have  not  considered  the  social 
import  of  lawmaking,  and  have  enacted  meas- 


74  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

Tires  by  majority  vote  in  the  interests  of  a  class, 
a  corporation,  or  an  individual.  Also  in  the 
administration  of  the  law  decisions  have  been 
made  by  a  jury  under  the  intimidation  of  the 
crowd,  or  by  a  judge  who  did  not  have  the  sense 
of  social  justice  and  responsibility.  Not  only 
must  the  lawmaker  be  educated  to  see  the  good 
of  society,  and  be  free  from  the  bribes  of  the 
lobbyist,  but  also  the  executors  of  the  law  must 
be  men  with  a  developed  social  consciousness 
that  will  enable  them  to  render  social  justice 
impartially. 

3.  In  the  fields  of  industry.  Men  may  utilize 
their  social  efificiency  in  the  fields  of  industry. 
Here  men  must  be  educated  socially  for  the 
tasks  of  managing  men  and  directing  great  in- 
dustrial and  commercial  enterprises  and  con- 
cerns in  the  interests  of  society  at  large,  which 
will  give  to  them  the  best  personal  returns  as  a 
reward,  for  the  public  will  not  begrudge  the 
individual  even  vast  accumulations  of  wealth 
when  they  have  been  achieved  by  enterprises 
conducted  in  the  interests  of  the  community  and, 
society  as  a  whole.  Leaders  of  organized  labor 
must  also  be  men  who  comprehend  the  relations 
of  labor  to  capital,  and  of  both  to  the  great  pub- 
lic who  use  the  goods  produced  for  the  market 
by  industrial  concerns.  In  recent  years  we  have 
witnessed  the  utilization  of  the  social  efficiency 
of  the  individual  in  this  field  as  never  before  in 


SOCIAL  EFFICIENCY  OF  INDIVIDUALS     75 

the  cases  of  men  who  by  their  power  of  social 
perspective  have  averted  industrial  warfare  by 
wise  counsels  and  by  directing  others  in  the 
pursuits  of  peace. 

4.  In  the  fields  of  religious  activity.  Here  we 
need  men  educated  for  the  social  tasks  of  the 
evangelization  of  the  masses  of  the  world's 
population  both  in  the  home  and  foreign  fields, 
and  in  directing  the  policies  of  the  great  or- 
ganized movements  for  ministering  to  the 
spiritual  needs  of  mankind.  We  see  some  ex- 
cellent illustrations  of  this  fact  in  the  states- 
manship of  some  of  our  bishops  in  the  home 
and  foreign  fields,  and  the  secretaries  of  our 
foreign  and  home  departments  of  missionary 
work,  as  well  as  in  the  splendid  program  of  the 
secretaries  of  the  Young  Men's  Christian  Asso- 
ciation. 

5.  In  the  management  of  organized  charity 
and  philanthropy.  Never  before  were  there 
evident  so  many  great  gifts  and  foundations 
for  the  betterment  and  welfare  of  the  depend- 
ent, defective,  and  delinquent  classes.  Our 
educational  institutions  must  furnish  the  men 
and  women  socially  trained  to  carry  out  the 
purpose  of  these  foundations  in  such  a  way  that 
the  problems  of  poverty  may  be  solved  rather 
than  made  more  difficult  by  the  very  methods 
adopted  for  their  solution.  It  took  a  century 
for  England  to  repeal  the  poor  laws  that  were 


76  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

increasing  the  pauperism  they  were  meant  to 
remove.  To-day  some  of  our  charita4:)le  institu- 
tions are  managed  by  men  and  women  who  have 
so  little  knowledge  of  real  charity  that  they 
would  rather  read  an  enlarged  monthly  statis- 
tical report  of  cases  treated  than  present  a 
statesmanlike  program  for  curing  some  of  the 
ills  for  which  the  institutions  were  founded. 

6.  In  our  educational  institutions.  Here,  as 
in  no  other  field,  we  need  men  so  trained  with 
a  social  perspective  and  insight  that  they  may 
adequately  direct  the  educational  forces  in 
every  community,  State,  and  nation  that  en- 
lightenment and  culture  may  become  universal, 
and  international  peace,  comity,  and  good  will 
become  permanent  possessions  of  humanity  as 
a  basis  for  yet  undreamed-of  stages  of  progress. 

What  the  Church  Can  Do 

It  may  be  asked  how  the  Church  can  co- 
operate with  other  institutions  in  this  educa- 
tional problem  of  developing  socially  efficient 
individuals.  In  response  to  this  inquiry  I 
would  reply  as  follows:  In  the  first  place,  the 
Sunday  school  and  Church,  taking  the  child  at 
the  most  plastic  period  of  its  life,  can  in  a  large 
measure  sweeten  the  fountains  of  heredity  by 
sanely  and  judiciously  directing  the  child's 
mind  with  respect  to  the  responsibilities  of  mar- 
riage and  parenthood.     As  a  matter  of  fact. 


SOCIAL  EFFICIENCY  OF  INDIVIDUALS     77 

from  a  long  experience  in  Sunday  school  work 
in  many  different  parts  of  the  country  and  in 
many  individual  churches,  I  do  not  remember 
to  have  heard  anything  very  definite  and  en- 
lightening on  the  subject  of  heredity  or  the 
responsibilities  of  marriage  in  any  class  of 
whatever  grade  I  have  attended.  I  do  not 
claim  that  this  is  the  experience  of  others,  but 
it  indicates  that  a  great  opportunity  is  lost  on 
many  a  young  man  or  woman  by  the  Sunday 
school  in  this  most  important  subject  of  hu- 
man concern. 

The  Sunday  school  can  do  much  to  control 
the  forces  of  environment  in  the  development 
of  child  life,  and  thus  have  much  to  do  with  this 
most  important  factor  of  individual  social  effi- 
ciency. Some  social  workers  of  long  experience 
claim  that  environment  is  about  nine  tenths  of 
destiny.  We  know  from  the  actual  facts  in  the 
treatment  of  orphans  and  neglected  children 
that  it  is  at  least  eighty-five  per  cent  of  the 
battle  for  good  citizenship  and  good  health. 
The  Sunday  school  can  also  bring  to  bear  upon 
the  personality  of  the  child  the  spiritual  forces 
at  the  command  of  the  Church.  It  can  teach  the 
individual  how  to  link  himself  with  God  through 
meditation  and  prayer,  so  that  one  shall  chase 
a  thousand  and  two  shall  put  ten  thousand  to 
flight.  Thus  we  see  that  in  the  development  of 
the  ''socius" — whom  we  defined  as  the  product 


78  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

of  heredity  and  environment  plus  personality, 
the  Sunday  school  may  play  a  most  effective 
part  in  the  directing  of  these  three  factors  in 
the  life  of  the  individual  in  society. 

In  the  second  place,  the  Church  and  Sunday 
school  can  discover  to  the  individual  the  forces 
and  powers  available  in  his  life  and  capable  of 
being  utilized  by  him  in  the  performance  of  so- 
cial tasks  when  the  proper  training  has  been 
secured.  I  do  not  claim  that  the  Church  is  to 
push  its  educational  work  to  the  point  of  labora- 
tories, and  drill  grounds,  and  proving  stations 
for  the  training  of  all  the  youth  within  her 
grasp,  for  this  may  be  well  done  by  institutions 
that  are  not  devoid  of  Christian  motive;  but  I 
mean  to  say  that  in  every  Sunday  school  com- 
munity it  is  possible  for  the  teacher  to  show 
the  student  examples  of  the  socially  efficient 
individual,  and  point  out  many,  if  not  all,  the 
factors  that  had  to  do  with  the  making  of  such  a 
man  of  worth  to  society.  The  stories  of  Moses 
and  of  Joshua,  of  Samuel  and  of  David — men 
of  the  highest  social  efficiency  in  their  day — ^can 
be  related  in  a  few  minutes  to  a  class  of  intelli- 
gent boys.  So  with  the  lives  of  many  great  men 
of  history  and  with  men  who  are  living  to-day 
in  the  esteem  of  the  nation  and  of  the  world  at 
large.  The  factors  in  their  life  processes  may 
be  related  in  an  hour,  and  some  of  them  could  be 
made  a  profitable  study  for  a  series  of  lessons. 


SOCIAL  EFFICIENCY  OF  INDIVIDUALS     79 

In  relating  to  a  class  of  boys  the  reasons  for  the 
social  estimate  of  Israel  upon  men  like  Samson 
and  Gideon,  it  should  not  be  forgotten  that 
there  are  equally  good  reasons  for  the  social 
estimate  of  the  American  people  upon  the  life 
of  a  William  McKinley  or  a  Grover  Cleveland, 
and  that  there  are  men  living  whose  lives  in  the 
making  are  as  simple  as  the  story  of  Moses  or 
Gideon.  But  even  the  physical  forces  and 
powers,  as  well  as  the  social  forces  and  groups, 
at  the  command  of  the  individual  to-day  may  be 
brought  within  the  range  of  the  Sunday  school 
work  in  illustrating  the  topic  under  discussion. 
In  the  third  place,  the  Church  and  Sunday 
school  can  furnish  the  religious  and  ethical  mo- 
tive that  will  give  quality  to  the  life  of  the  in- 
dividual upon  whom  society  will  put  the  highest 
estimate  of  efficiency.  A  man  may  win  the  so- 
cial esteem  of  to-day  by  some  brilliant  stroke  of 
genius,  but  unless  there  is  an  ethical  purpose 
and  a  religious  quality  to  his  life  society  will 
not  long  hold  him  in  high  esteem.  On  the  con- 
trary, many  a  man  who  with  these  qualities  has 
toiled  on  without  recognition  of  his  work  in  his 
day  and  generation  has  later  received,  or  will 
yet  receive,  a  due  estimate  of  his  work  if  it  has 
been  well  done  in  the  interest  of  society.  The 
crucified  of  one  age  is  the  exalted  of  another  if 
his  work  has  been  wrought  for  the  saving  of 
the  race. 


80  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

So  I  claim  that  while  we  may  have  the 
highest  conceptions  of  social  action  by  the  in- 
telligent group,  we  should  not  forget  the  social 
efficiency  of  the  individual,  and  while  we  are 
studying  the  factors  of  great  social  move- 
ments we  should  not  neglect  to  teach  to  the  stu- 
dent of  to-day  the  factors  in  the  life  of  the  in- 
dividual upon  whom  the  age  sets  the  highest 
estimate  of  worth.  As  an  educational  problem 
all  this  involves  a  development  and  education  of 
the  social  mind. 


CHAPTER  VI 

the  development  and  education  of  the 
social  mind 

What  We  Mean  by  the  Social  Mind 

It  will  not  be  practicable  for  us  to  enter  into 
a  more  thorough  treatment  of  the  social  mind 
from  the  viewpoint  of  the  social  psychologist, 
or  from  the  standpoint  of  the  sociologist  who 
places  emphasis  upon  the  mind  of  the  group — 
or  the  manifestations  of  mob  mind — or  the 
decisions  of  orderly  society.  But  we  treat 
the  subject  in  a  rather  unacademic  way  be- 
cause the  ordinary  man  makes  use  of  ex- 
pressions that  indicate  he  knows  what  is 
meant  by  the  term.  We,  for  example,  fre- 
quently hear  people  say,  *'We  must  make  up 
our  mind  to  do  this,  or  that,  or  so  and  so," 
which  would  indicate  an  association  or  group 
of  ideas  that  was  common  to  all  and  yet  could 
be  best  expressed  by  the  action  of  the  group 
as  a  whole.  According  to  Professor  Giddings, 
"The  social  mind  is  the  phenomenon  of  many 
individual  minds  in  interaction,  so  playing  upon 
one  another  that  they  simultaneously  feel  the 
same  sensation  or  emotion,  arrive  at  one  judg- 
ment and,  perhaps,  act  in  concert.     It  is,  in 

81 


82  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

short,  the  mental  unity  of  many  individuals 
or  of  the  crowd.  "^  According  to  Professor 
Cooley,  the  social  mind  is  but  a  larger  aspect 
of  mind  in  general.  To  quote:  *'Mind  is  an  or- 
ganic whole  made  up  of  cooperating  individu- 
alities. .  .  .  When  we  study  the  social  mind  we 
merely  fix  our  attention  on  larger  aspects  and 
relations  rather  than  on  narrower  ones  of  or- 
dinary psychology.  The  unity  of  the  social 
mind  consists  not  in  agreement  but  in  organiza- 
tion. '  '2  Professor  Wundt,  of  Leipzig,  says  that 
from  the  viewpoint  of  the  experimental  psychol- 
ogist a  people  or  folk  may  have  a  mind  or  soul 
as  well  as  an  individual.^  Of  course  he  was  in 
this  connection  considering  not  the  social  mind 
so  much  as  the  manifestations  of  the  mind  of 
the  group.  But  there  seems  to  be  in  the  mind 
of  the  ordinary  reader  some  confusion  aftert 
reading  these  definitions  as  to  whether  the  so- 
cial mind  can  be  the  possession  of  the  individual 
while  at  the  same  time  it  is  the  possession  of 
the  group ;  and,  again,  as  to  whether  the  group 
may  not  possess  a  mind  so  narrow  as  to  be  en- 
tirely devoid  of  social  content  in  the  true  sense 
of  the  term  ''social."  I  think,  therefore,  that 
we  may  get  some  help  toward  clearing  our 
minds  of  this  confusion  by  defining  the  social 

»  See  "Principles  of  Soc!olog>%"  1903,  p.  134. 
*  See  Publications  of  American  Sociological  Society,  pp.  vi,  97. 
» From    "Lectures    on    'Volkerpsychologie,'  "    in    Leipzig,    1910, 
taken  from  my  notes. 


THE  SOCIAL  MIND  83 

mind  as  follows:  (1)  The  social  mind  consists 
in  a  body  of  knowledge  or  of  ideas,  that  may  be 
realized  in  conduct  that  has  social  values,  and 
may  be  expressed  in  thoughts,  feelings,  or 
deeds.  (2)  This  body  of  knowledge  may  be 
possessed  by  an  individual  in  society,  or  by  a 
group  in  its  relation  to  other  groups  or  indi- 
viduals, or  by  a  nation  at  large,  and  ultimately 
by  humanity  as  a  whole.  (3)  Such  a  social  mind 
can  be  developed  only  through  experience  in 
human  relations. 

We  must  be  careful  just  here  not  to  confound 
the  social  mind  with  the  social  consciousness, 
and  it  would  be  well  for  the  reader  to  review 
just  at  this  point  Jhapter  I.  Mind  is  a  body  of 
knowledge  upon  which  the  understanding  or 
mentality  of  man  is  founded.  An  idiot  may  be 
conscious,  but  he  has  no  mind  to  speak  of,  no 
knowledge.  But  a  normal  individual  person  is 
never  conscious  of  all  he  has  in  his  mind  at  any 
stated  period.  Consciousness  is  a  state  of 
mind ;  social  consciousness  the  state  of  the  mind 
with  reference  to  society,  and  may  be  mani- 
fested by  the  indi^ddual  or  by  the  social  group. 
In  this  connection  it  is  well  to  be  reminded  also 
of  the  importance  of  making  a  distinction  be- 
tween consciousness  of  society  or  of  things 
about  us  and  the  social  consciousness.  They 
do  not  necessarily  mean  the  same  psycholog- 
ically.   Social  consciousness  implies  the  ability 


84  THE  SOCIAI.  ENGINEER 

of  the  individual  person  or  group  to  make  use 
of  ideas  for  the  advantage  of  society  as  well  as 
for  self.  In  fact,  no  idea,  whether  in  the  con- 
sciousness of  the  individual  or  in  that  of  the 
group,  can  be  properly  called  social  until  it  can 
be  expressed  in  terms  of  social  activity  of  some 
sort.  To  be  aware  of  persons  or  of  a  social 
group  does  not  prove  that  an  individual  or  a 
society  of  individuals  has  a  social  consciousness, 
in  the  true  sense  of  the  word,  any  more  than  to 
be  aware  of  a  flock  of  sheep  would  prove  for 
the  pack  of  wolves  that  they  had  any  social  con- 
sciousness so  far  as  the  interests  of  the  sheep 
were  concerned.  Social  consciousness  always 
involves  a  moral  element  in  human  associations 
as  well  as  the  element  of  utility.  We  may  say, 
therefore,  that  the  social  mind  involves  the 
ability  of  a  group  of  persons  possessing  a  body 
of  knowledge  to  think  together,  to  feel  the  same 
way,  and  to  act  together  for  the  good  of  the 
group  and  other  groups,  or  for  individuals 
within  or  without  the  group.  And  it  also 
equally  implies  the  ability  of  the  individual 
possessing  such  a  body  of  laiowledge  to  act  in 
a  similar  way  with  the  same  motives  and  for 
the  same  ends. 

The  Development  of  the  Social  Mind 

How  can  the  social  mind  be  developed  ?     This 
is  the  important  question  for  the  educator  to 


THE  SOCIAL  MIND  85 

answer,  and  to  none  is  it  more  important  than 
to  the  religious  social  engineer  who  has  the 
chance  to  develop  in  the  individuals  of  the  com- 
munity the  mind  of  the  Master,  and  to  bring 
together  that  body  of  knowledge  which  may  be 
utilized  for  the  mutual  uplift  of  the  whole  com- 
munity. I  would  answer  this  question  in  brief 
by  saying :  The  social  mind  can  be  developed  by 
the  presence  of  those  who  possess  it — by  the 
principle  of  imitation  through  the  awakening  of 
desire  in  the  soul  of  the  individual  or  of  the 
group.  In  short,  by  the  ministry  of  personality. 
Upon  this  fact  is  based  the  entire  success  of  the 
social-settlement  movement.  The  social  mind 
develops  in  the  same  way  that  any  mind  de- 
velops. In  the  individual  it  is  the  unfoldment 
of  the  instincts  and  desires  into  their  corre- 
sponding faculties  of  personality  throughout 
the  entire  period  of  growth.  So  for  the  group : 
in  the  process  of  association  there  will  be  pe- 
riods of  conflict,  toleration,  alliance,  sympathy, 
and  pleasurable  cooperation  between  grouf)s. 
No  group  can  possess  the  social  mind  without 
having  mastered  itself  in  all  these  stages  of  as- 
sociation. So  we  find  that  the  basis  of  social 
control  is  self-control  in  the  individual  factors 
of  society.  The  social  mind  is  developed  in  the 
beginning  for  the  race  in  the  family  group,  and 
other  factors  of  the  social  composition,  such  as 
horde,  clan,   tribe,   and  folkj  up  through  all 


86  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

the  stages  of  nation  building,  and  will  reach 
its  culmination  in  "the  parliament  of  man" 
through  the  ''federation  of  the  world."  For 
the  individual  social  units  to-day  the  social 
mind  begins  to  develop  in  the  family,  and  is 
more  rapidly  developed  by  association  in  the 
vast  and  intricate  network  of  voluntary  and 
l^urposive  organizations  in  the  social  constitn- 
tion  of  the  State  or  nation,  and  through  the 
Christian  world-view  of  the  brotherhood  of 
man. 

The  Education  op  the  Social.  Mind 

Another  question  of  interest  to  the  modem 
educator  is,  How  may  we  educate  the  developed 
social  mind!  Men  and  nations  are  often  stimu- 
lated to  heroic  and  beneficent  deeds  for  the  good 
of  others  by  the  applause  or  approval  of  the 
crowd;  but  they  are  as  frequently  spoiled  by 
the  flattery  or  deterred  by  the  threatening  of 
the  multitude.  What  we  need  most  in  our  day, 
is  an  educated  and  cultured  social  mind  that 
will  be  so  well  developed  in  all  its  faculties  that 
there  may  be  always  in  every  community  and 
nation  rational  social  action,  the  result  of  well- 
balanced  judgments  and  properly  controlled 
emotions. 

We  can  educate  the  social  mind  only  by 
dealing  with  the  social  units  within  the  range 
of  our  educational  institutions,  and  I  include 


THE  SOCIAL  MIND  87 

among  them  the  Sunday  school  as  one  of  the 
most  important. 

1.  We  must  teach  men  and  women  what  so- 
ciety is  and  what  it  is  not;  what  we  can  do  to 
reform  and  change  the  social  order  and  what  we 
cannot  do.  This,  of  course,  involves  the  study 
of  the  science  of  society  in  the  curriculum  of 
the  schools,  as  well  as  sane  teaching  in  the  Sun- 
day schools  of  the  country  the  principles  of 
social  structure  and  of  the  modern  social  move- 
ment, with  emphasis,  of  course,  upon  the  social 
message  of  Jesus  and  the  prophets,  and  the 
splendid  social  program  of  the  apostle  Paul. 

2.  The  student  must  be  related  to  society  as 
it  is,  and  be  taught  the  importance  of  heredity 
and  environment  in  the  life  of  society — that 
both  are  socializing  factors  in  the  life  of  every 
individual  for  good  or  evil.  He  must  be  shown 
also  the  social  character  of  religion,  that  his 
life  may  be  based  properly  upon  the  relation  of 
every  creature  to  the  Infinite  Creator,  and  espe- 
cially of  the  individual  to  Jesus  Christ.  He 
must  be  taught  the  social  basis  of  morals.  This 
can  be  done  more  easily  than  some  think.  For 
illustration:  Professor  Sweet,  of  the  Syracuse 
Mechanics  School,  related  one  evening  to  the 
Schoolmasters'  Club  of  Syracuse  how  he  taught 
a  class  a  lesson  in  social  morals  on  one  occasion 
in  his  school.  A  young  fellow  had  borrowed 
from  one  of  his  classmates,  without  asking,  a 


88  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

pair  of  calipers,  and  having  broken  them  by 
carelessness  in  the  using  returned  them  to  the 
locker  without  telling  his  classmate  either  that 
he  had  borrowed  them  or  had  broken  them ;  and 
when  it  was  discovered  and  reported  to  the  pro- 
fessor he  said  to  the  whole  school  next  morn- 
ing at  chapel:  ''Some  young  man  has  lost  a 
great  opportunity  of  his  life — an  opportunity 
of  winning  the  esteem  of  his  classmates — but 
now  has  won  their  condemnation  and  distrust 
by  not  being  a  man  and  making  it  right  with 
his  classmate";  ^nd  he  added  in  his  address 
to  the  club,  "You  can  readily  see  that  such  a 
lesson  in  social  morality  would  make  a  lasting 
impression  upon  a  whole  class  of  young  boys 
and  girls  in  any  school  or  college  recitation 
room."  And  we  might  add,  that  such  lessons 
in  social  morality  may  be  easily  taught  in  the 
Sunday  school  classes  of  all  grades  in  every 
community.  The  student  can  be  taught  also  the 
social  character  of  industry — how  socialized  the 
labor  necessary  in  production  for  the  world 
markets  has  become  to-day.  This  would  lead 
to  a  better  understanding  between  employers 
and  their  workers,  and  of  the  responsibilities  of 
all  organized  industry  to  society  at  large.  The 
social  character  of  commerce  could  be  easily 
illustrated  by  the  various  communities,  States, 
and  nations  that  are  bound  together  in  social 
organizations  by  the  bands  of  commercial  en- 


THE  SOCIAL  MIND  89 

terprises  and  needs.  Also  the  social  signifi- 
cance of  government  could  be  illustrated  by  the 
examples  of  men  serving  the  State  with  effi- 
ciency, and  by  the  examples  of  others  who  ex- 
ploit public  office  for  private  and  personal  ends. 
3.  We  can  educate  the  social  mind  by  socializ- 
ing our  educational  agencies  and  equipments. 
The  teachers  in  all  our  schools  must  be  them- 
selves equipped  with  the  social  mind — with 
thorough  knowledge  of  society  and  the  relation 
of  the  individual  to  it.  Many  of  our  text-books 
must  be  modified  to  suit  the  changing  needs  of 
the  social  consciousness  and  activity  of  our  age. 
Literature  and  history  written  with  individual 
or  partisan  bias  will  illustrate  what  I  mean.  Of 
course  for  the  Sunday  school  and  Church  it 
means  the  modification  of  our  interpretation  of 
the  social  teachings  of  Jesus  and  the  apostles, 
and  a  corresponding  change  in  our  Sunday 
school  literature,  which,  happily,  we  are  getting 
under  the  efficient  leadership  of  editors  and 
secretaries.  Again,  the  socializing  disciplines 
of  industry,  trades,  and  crafts  must  be  more 
widely  introduced  and  more  efficiently  equipped 
in  our  public  schools.  The  homes  and  family 
life  of  the  masses  must  be  improved  in  many 
quarters.  This  can  often  be  done  indirectly 
through  neighborhood  meetings,  lectures,  moth- 
ers' clubs,  etc.,  under  the  auspices  of  the  school. 
Our  cities  can  be  educated  so  as  to  develop  civic 


90  THE  SOCIAX  ENGINEER 

pride  among  their  inhabitants  by  improvements 
in  their  streets,  parks,  playgrounds,  buildings, 
etc.,  and  by  organizing  local  community  im- 
provement associations  such  as  have  been  or- 
ganized with  promising  results  in  many  cities 
and  towns.  All  these  agencies  and  factors  of 
our  ordinary  community  life  can  be  socialized 
for  the  education  of  the  social  mind  in  the  life 
of  the  present. 

To  do  all  this  there  must  be,  of  course,  an 
aroused  social  consciousness,  an  enlightened 
public  opinion,  persistent  social  effort  by  the 
will  of  the  people  held  firmly  directed  by  in- 
telligent social  control  toward  the  Christian 
ideal  for  the  government  of  society — the  king- 
dom of  God  on  earth.  What  institution  fur- 
nishes a  better  chance  for  social  service  along 
these  lines  of  efficient  individual  effort  than  the 
Sunday  school,  with  its  millions  of  young 
plastic  lives  and  thousands  of  strong,  educated 
young  men  and  women,  who  give  promise  of 
efficient  social  leadership  when  they  shall  have 
developed  and  educated  this  mind  in  them  that 
was  in  Christ  Jesus'? 


CHAPTEE  VII 


SOCIAL  PROGRESS 


AVe  can  readily  see  that  the  study  of  social 
progress  belongs  to  the  general  topic  of  social 
education,  for,  unless  we  know  something  of 
its  meaning,  how  are  we  to  know  the  worth  of 
our  educational  system,  and  what  will  be  the 
ultimate  outcome  of  all  our  efforts  to  teach  the 
individual  his  relation  to  life  1  "What  may  seem 
progress  in  the  popular  mind  may  be  retro- 
gression, and  what  may  seem  to  be  going  back 
may  be  but  the  wiser  course  in  order  to  find  the 
right  road  to  our  destination.  It  is,  therefore, 
important  at  the  outset  that  we  have  clearly  in 
mind  some  definite  notions  of  what  is  meant 
by  social  progress.  If  we  are  not  able  to  define 
progress,  have  we  a  right  to  go  on  with  any 
system  that  may  ultimately  lead  us  into  defeat 
in  the  struggle  with  other  competing  factors 
and  forces  in  the  make-up  of  human  society? 
If  we  are  retrograding,  may  it  not  be  possible 
for  us  to  discover  the  fact  and  prepare  to  meet 
it  by  teaching  the  principles  of  progress  to  the 
social  units,  and  inspiring  them  to  fall  in  line 
with  the  best  policy  and  win  victory  out  of 
seeming  defeat?     We  all  have  some  general 

91 


92  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

notion  of  progress,  yet  how  few  of  us  have 
clearly  in  mind  any  adequate  definition  of  prog- 
ress, or  have  in  hand  any  norms  by  which  to 
measure  it !  These  we  must  have,  as  social  en- 
gineers, if  we  are  to  do  our  best  work  in  fulfill- 
ing the  social  tasks  of  instructing  those  who 
are  to  be  the  contributors  to  progress  or  be- 
come a  drag  to  the  forward  movement  of  so- 
ciety. 

It  is  our  purpose,  therefore,  in  this  chapter 
to  give  the  reader  some  of  the  ideas  of  social 
progress,  the  norms  by  which  it  may  be  meas- 
ured, and  what  we  consider  to  be  an  adequate 
definition. 

Ideas  of  Progress 

Our  ideas  of  social  excellence  are  either 
retrospective  or  prospective.  We  either  think 
the  former  days  were  better  than  these,  or  we 
look  for  good  days  to  come;  we  either  look  to 
the  past  for  the  "Golden  Age,"  or  we  look  for- 
ward to  the  '•millennium"  that  is  to  be. 

Plistory  furnishes  us  with  stretches  of  time 
and  milestones  of  experience,  so  that  we  can 
compare  age  with  age,  or  study  the  course  of 
life  in  cross-section,  so  to  speak,  and  discover 
by  the  scientific  method  of  observation  and  in- 
duction whether  this  age  is  in  the  line  of  prog- 
ress as  compared  with  any  other  age.  So  we 
speak  of  the  ' '  Dark  Ages, ' '  the  ' '  Middle  Ages ' ' ; 


SOCIAL  PROGRESS  93 

of  the  periods  of  the  "Reformation,"  the 
"Renaissance,"  the  "Aufklaerung";  of  the 
days  of  Feudalism,  slavery,  absolutism.  Democ- 
racy, constitutional  government,  etc.,  and  we 
may  rightly  ask,  "Does  this  method  constitute 
for  us  a  norm  of  progress?" 

Among  the  prospective  ideas  of  progress 
may  be  mentioned  the  following : 

1.  The  Hebrew  people  had  their  ideal  of 
progress,  when  an  age  of  peace  should  come 
in  which  nation  should  no  longer  lift  up  sword 
against  nation,  nor  even  learn  war  any  more; 
that  splendid  time  which  the  prophets  had  fore- 
told when  no  man  shall  say  to  his  neighbor, 
"Knowest  thou  the  Lord?"  for  they  shall  all 
know  him  from  the  least  unto  the  greatest. 

2.  Jesus  and  his  apostles  thought  of  a  future 
state,  when  there  shall  be  one  fold  and  one 
Shepherd,  when  the  kingdoms  of  this  world 
shall  become  the  kingdom  of  our  Lord  and  his 
Christ,  when  all  peoples  shall  know  of  the 
Fatherhood  of  God  and  acknowledge  the 
brotherhood  of  the  human  race. 

3.  The  philosopher  has  an  idea  of  the  time 
when  that  state  of  society  shall  have  been 
reached  wherein  the  conduct  of  every  individual 
will  contribute  to  the  good  of  self,  of  offspring, 
and  of  humanity  at  large;  a  time  when  nature *s 
law  of  need  and  supply,  desire  and  satisfaction, 
shall  be  so  adjusted  that  there  will  be  no  longer 


94  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

suffering  and  pain ;  a  condition  of  development 
when  tasks  now  irksome  will  be  pleasurable  be- 
cause persisted  in,  and  because  they  are  neces- 
sary for  the  common  good.^ 

4.  The  economist  has  his  ideas  of  progress, 
in  which  every  nation  shall  come  to  a  state  of 
economic  and  industrial  independence,  when  by 
a  di\dsion  of  labor  there  shall  be  no  longer 
destructive  competition  between  states,  but  a 
reciprocity  that  will  be  mutually  beneficial  to  all. 

5.  The  sociologist  has  his  ideas  of  progress 
which  shall  gradually  establish  for  the  civilized 
world  an  equilibrium  between  population  in- 
crease and  the  nation's  ability  to  maintain  its 
standard  of  living  with  an  increasing  ratio  of 
social  betterment,  leading  ultimately  to  perfect 
control  of  society  over  the  reproductive  forces 
of  the  population  and  the  productive  agencies 
which  furnish  the  necessary  commodities  of  life. 

6.  The  educator  has  an  ideal  of  progress, 
when  every  member  of  the  state  will  know  how 
to  read,  write,  and  cipher,  and  the  great  mass  of 
the  people  have  many  things  that  go  to  make 
up  the  cultured  social  mind;  when  every  child 
shall  learn  to  become  a  breadwinner  for  the 
family  group  or  for  society,  and  be  at  the  same 
time  so  related  to  the  life  of  society  that  he  will 
not  take  the  bread  of  another  in  winning  his 
own  bread. 


'  Compare  Spencer,  "Data  of  Ethics.' 


SOCIAL  PROGRESS  95 

7.  The  statesman  thinks  of  a  stage  of  prog- 
ress that  will  bring  to  every  citizen  the  greatest 
measure  of  freedom  under  the  law,  and  main- 
tain the  full  measure  of  his  rights  to  life,  liberty, 
and  the  pursuit  of  happiness,  a  time  when  all 
who  want  work  can  find  it  at  good  wages,  and  a 
state  in  which  everybody  will  enjoy  the  greatest 
amount  of  happiness. 

From  all  these  ideas  of  social  progress,  retro- 
spectively considered  as  well  as  prospectively 
outlined,  we  should  be  able  to  deduce  some  defi- 
nite norms  of  progress  by  which  it  may  be 
measured,  and  also  to  postulate  a  practicable 
definition. 

How  Progress  May  be  Measured 

We  can  state  at  the  outset  that  our  measure 
of  social  progress  may  be  either  quantitative 
or  qualitative.  But  it  is  not  safe  for  us  to 
measure  progress  by  the  quantity  of  goods  we 
may  possess,  or  by  the  balance  sheet  of  the  na- 
tion at  large.  A  man's  life  consisteth  not  in 
the  abundance  of  things  which  he  possesseth, 
but,  rather,  in  the  quality  of  the  character  he 
has  acquired,  or  in  the  quality  of  the  life  he 
manifests  toward  others  in  society.  "We  may 
state  also  that  our  measure  of  progress  must 
be  based  upon  the  whole  range  of  man's  pos- 
sibilities, from  his  lowest  estate  to  the  highest 
achievement  of  which  he  is  capable  through 


96  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

self-realization  and  divine  grace.  This  includes 
the  concepts  of  man's  sainthood  as  well  as  his 
beginnings  in  savagery,  or  his  degeneration  to 
the  condition  of  the  savage.  It  can  also  be 
stated  that  our  norms  of  progress  will  be  found 
in  man  himself  as  the  measure  of  all  things. 
We  begin  with  the  individual  and  note  the 
changes  in  him  for  progress  in  social  better- 
ment; we  study  the  social  group  in  which  he 
lives,  moves,  and  has  his  being,  until  we  have 
reached  the  organized  consciousness  of  hu- 
manity at  large. 

Christian  education  deals  with  man  in  all  his 
social  relations,  and  with  him  in  the  use  he 
makes  of  the  social  machinery  and  organization 
by  which  he  achieves  for  the  betterment  of  him- 
self, of  his  family,  the  State,  and  the  world  at 
large.  We,  therefore,  expect  a  demand  from 
the  educators  of  our  youth  for  some  norm  of 
progress  by  which  the  individual  in  every  rela- 
tion may  be  measured.  Here  we  discover  that 
progress  is  a  sociological  concept  of  humanity, 
for  no  nation  or  people  in  these  days  of  com- 
plex social  relations,  world-wide  in  scope,  liveth 
unto  himself.  Now,  if  progress  does  not  con- 
sist merely  in  quantitative  elements,  but,  rather, 
in  qualitative  achievement,  then  progress  must 
be  measured  by  some  ethical  standard  which 
will  enable  us  to  determine  the  real  values  of 
human  life  as  it  proceeds  on  the  earth. 


SOCIAL  PROGRESS  97 

It  is  also  true  that  our  measure  of  human 
progress  must  be  the  practicable  and  workable 
principles  at  the  basis  of  social  ethics.  These 
we  find  in  Christian  philosophy  to  be  (1)  the 
perfect  or  ultimate  man,  (2)  the  perfect  or  ulti- 
mate society,  (3)  the  jDorfect  or  ultimate  laws 
governing  men  in  society.  These  we  must  de- 
termine as  to  content  in  the  light  of  human  ex- 
perience, the  Scriptures,  and  sanctified  reason, 
and  then  they  become  for  us  the  measures  of 
progress;  for  to  our  thinking  there  can  be  no 
movement  beyond  the  perfect  that  may  be 
rightly  termed  progress.  Hence  progress  is, 
after  all,  determined  more  by  comparison  with 
one's  ideals  than  by  measurement  with  actual 
things. 

Kinds  of  Progress  to  be  Measured 

Our  norms  of  progress  will  depend  upon  the 
kind  of  achievement  we  propose  to  measure : 

1.  If  we  propose  to  measure  material  prog- 
ress, we  usually  consider  the  statistics  of  one's 
wealth  or  possessions,  and  for  the  nation  the 
balance  of  trade  or  the  surplus  in  the  national 
treasury.  If  we  view  it  from  the  viewpoint  of 
population  and  the  military  strength  of  a  na- 
tion, we  count  those  able  to  bear  arms  and  tabu- 
late the  birth  rate  and  the  death  rate. 

2.  If  we  view  progress  from  the  point  of 
education  and  culture,  we  take  the  school  cen- 


98  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEEK 

sus,  and  the  number  of  educational  institu- 
tions and  cultural  organizations,  their  relative 
strength  and  endowment  as  compared  with  an- 
other age  or  another  nation  in  the  same  period. 
We  also  measure  the  progress  of  individuals  in 
a  school  by  the  number  of  those  who  are  capable 
of  meeting  certain  educational  tests. 

3.  If  we  consider  progress  from  the  religious 
point  of  view,  our  norm  is  the  relative  number 
in  attendance  upon  religious  worship,  and  of 
those  who  are  communicants  or  adherents  of 
the  various  faiths. 

4.  From  the  moral  point  of  view  we  measure 
progress  by  the  statistics  of  vice  and  crime  as 
represented  in  the  general  classification  of  the 
criminal  code.  Also  from  the  prevalence  and 
strength  of  moral  sentiment  expressed  in  the 
press,  or  by  the  public  platform,  or  in  general 
conversation  in  the  presence  of  some  instance 
of  wrongdoing. 

5.  If  we  measure  human  progress  from  the 
sociological  point  of  view,  our  norms  are  unity 
and  complexity  of  social  organization,  the 
amount  of  social  machinery,  and  the  efficiency 
of  social  engineering,  the  lack  of  friction  be- 
tween the  various  factors  that  operate  in  hu- 
man society,  the  relative  chances  of  war  and 
peace  in  a  given  case  of  provocation. 

6.  Social  progress  in  general  must  be  meas- 
ured in  terms  of  life,  for  the  fullest  life  consists 


SOCIAL  PROGRESS  99 

in  the  greatest  measure  of  health,  wealth,  and 
goodness,  or  social  esteem.  We  therefore 
measure  the  progress  of  our  age  by  the  vital 
statistics  which  mark  control  of  diseases,  by 
the  figures  which  reveal  the  general  distribu- 
tion and  possession  of  wealth,  and  by  the  in- 
stances that  reveal  the  righteousness  and  good- 
ness of  society  in  dealing  with  its  component 
members  and  with  its  neighbor  groups. 

In  all  these  fields  of  human  activity  Chris- 
tian education  is  the  supreme  agency  for  the 
promotion  of  that  kind  of  intelligence  which 
makes  social  progress  possible  and  knowable. 

Definitions  of  Peogeess 

According  to  Hegel,  the  great  German  phi- 
losopher, human  development,  or  progress,  is 
conceived  as  a  process  of  self-realization.  Step 
by  step  man  comes  to  know  himself  as  a  self- 
conscious  and  self-determining  being,  as  a  con- 
stituent factor  in  the  universe,  as  an  organic 
whole.  History  has  been,  therefore,  the  prog- 
ress of  the  consciousness  of  freedom.  Freedom 
was  at  first  conceived  as  an  abstract  principle 
in  the  universe,  and  was  believed  to  exist  only 
in  one  person — God  himself  in  heaven,  or  the 
monarch  on  earth.  Hence  the  absolutism  of 
the  Eastern  world.  The  Greeks  advanced  this 
idea  to  include  the  citizens  as  against  slaves; 
Rome  advanced  the  idea  to  include  personal 


100  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

rights  under  the  law,  and,  finally,  the  Germanic 
peoples  reached  the  conception  of  freedom  as 
the  birthright  of  all  men.^ 

According  to  Anguste  Comte,  progress  has 
been  realized  in  three  stages  of  development: 
1.  The  theological,  in  which  every  act  and  event 
was  conceived  as  a  direct  intervention  of  Deity. 
Man  could,  therefore,  make  no  progress  in 
science  or  morality  because  he  was  childish, 
superstitious,  and  hero-worshiping.  2.  The 
metaphysical  stage,  in  which  man  sought  to  in- 
terpret the  world  in  terms  of  principles,  ab- 
stractions, entities,  and,  therefore,  lost  himself 
in  fruitless  speculation.  The  human  mind  was 
free  but  wasted  its  energies  in  questionings 
concerning  the  unknowable.  3.  The  positive, 
or  scientific,  stage,  in  which  speculation  gives 
place  to  observation,  experiment,  induction, 
and  generalization.  Men,  finding  that  there  are 
enough  knowable  facts  to  keep  the  mind  busy, 
build  on  foundations  of  fact,  learn  the  secrets 
of  nature  which  enable  them  to  master  the  ma- 
terial and  moral  conditions  of  life.^ 

According  to  Herbert  Spencer,  ''organic 
progress  consists  in  a  change  from  the  homo- 
geneous to  the  heterogeneous,"  and  this  prin- 
ciple he  applied  to  all  progress,  including  the 
society  as  well,  for,  says  he,  ''From  the  earliest 


'  Vorlesungen  iiber  die  Philosophie  dec  Geschichte, 
*  See  his  "Philosophie  Positiv." 


SOCIAL  PROGREvSS  101 

traceable  cosmic  changes  down  to  the  latest 
results  of  civilization  we  shall  find  that  the 
transformation  of  the  homogeneous  into  the 
heterogeneous  is  that  in  which  progress  essen- 
tially consists."^ 

According  to  Professor  Giddings,  "objec- 
tively viewed  progress  is  an  increasing  inter- 
course, a  multiplication  of  relationships,  an 
advance  in  material  well-being,  a  growth  of 
population  and  an  evolution  of  rational  con^ 
duct.''^  Subjectively,  '^  progress  is  the  expan- 
sion of  the  consciousness  of  kind."  And  we 
quote  further:  ''The  successive  world  empires 
of  Persia,  Macedonia,  and  Rome  prepared  the 
way  for  the  Christian  conception  of  universal 
brotherhood.  It  made  but  little  impression 
upon  the  social  mhid  until  it  was  converted  into 
an  ideal,  into  a  doctrine  that  all  men  through  a 
spiritual  renewing  were  made  brothers.  Chris- 
tianity became  the  most  tremendous  power  in 
history.  Gradually  it  has  been  realizing  its 
ideal,  until  to-day  a  Christian  philanthropy  and 
Christian  missionary  enterprise,  devoting  them- 
selves to  the  diffusion  of  knowledge  and  the  im- 
provement of  the  conditions  and  the  upbuilding 
of  character,  are  uniting  the  classes  and  the 
races  of  mankind  in  a  spiritual  humanity.  "^ 

My  own  definition  of  progress  is  as  follows : 


1  See  Westminster  Review,  April,  1857. 
*  See  "Principles  of  Sociology,"  p.  360. 


102  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

1.  For  the  individual,  progi'ess  consists  in  the 
measure  of  self-realization  and  self-control,  and 
in  the  social  efficiency  and  socialization  of  the 
individuals  of  the  group.  2.  For  the  nation,  it 
consists  in  the  development  of  rational  social 
control  of  all  its  members,  and  in  a  conscious- 
ness of  kind  that  overcomes  social  friction,  the 
evolution  of  social  organization,  and  invention 
of  social  machinery  that  enable  it  to  utilize 
and  control  all  the  social  forces  and  energies 
within  and  resist  the  social  forces  and  powers 
from  without  that  are  harmful,  and  in  the  re- 
lating of  itself  to  all  other  social  groups  in  a 
sympathetic  and  pleasurable  way.  3.  For  hu- 
manity as  a  whole,  progress  consists  in  the  con- 
sciousness of  an  onward  movement  of  the  race 
toward  an  ideal  state  of  society  recognized  by 
the  social  mind  in  general  as  attainable,  and  in 
social  efforts  for  its  attainment. 

To  make  progress  thus  defined  possible  there 
is  always  implied  in  all  the  social  factors  the 
intellectual  grasp  of  the  social  significance  of 
all  educational  fields.  How  this  intellectual 
grasp  may  be  attained  by  all  the  social  factors 
can  be  shown  only  by  a  more  thorough  discus- 
sion of  the  social  aspects  of  education.  No  edu- 
cational institution  has  a  better  chance  to  con- 
tribute to  this  result  than  the  Sunday  school 
that  is  up  to  date  in  its  method  of  organization 
and  teaching. 


CHAPTER  VIII 


SOCIAIi  STUDIES 


There  are  times  when  certain  needs  are  so 
keenly  felt  and  conditions  so  evidently  ready 
for  reform  that  men  act  spontaneously  for  the 
relief  of  their  fellows,  but  at  other  times  the 
needs  for  social  action  are  so  remote  or  hidden 
to  the  ordinary  man  of  affairs,  and  conditions 
so  deceiving  to  even  the  interested,  that  there 
must  be  long  and  persistent  and  patient  study 
before  adequate  measures  can  be  put  in  opera- 
tion for  the  permanent  good  of  the  community. 
So  it  is  necessary  for  the  best  results  to  inau- 
gurate in  every  community  social  studies  by 
men  who  hope  to  do  the  most  good  for  their 
times,  and  those  who  shall  come  after. 

No  one  knows  when  he  sets  out  upon  the  task 
of  social  study  what  are  to  be  the  factors  of  the 
problem  he  is  seeking  to  solve.  Take,  for  ex- 
ample, any  particular  case  of  drunkenness, 
pauperism,  or  homicide  in  your  community; 
then  take  up  a  study  of  all  the  influences  and 
factors  in  the  life  of  such  an  individual,  and 
you  will  be  surprised  to  find  how  far-reaching 
in  social  relations  and  causes  this  case  roots 
itself.    So  for  the  institutions,  good  or  bad,  laws 

103 


104  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

and  customs  that  need  revision  or  reform.  All 
furnish  interesting  fields  and  phases  of  social 
study  that  will  make  more  real  to  the  men  of 
to-day  the  problems  of  the  social  engineer  in 
every  age  as  well  as  our  own. 

Do  the  men  of  the  community  have,  as  a 
rule,  any  adequate  notions  as  to  why  we  have 
the  various  classes  of  society,  persons  varying 
in  degrees  of  personality,  in  vitality,  and  in 
social  status  among  their  fellows  in  the  same 
community?  Have  they  always  a  clear  idea 
as  to  why  we  have  the  struggles  of  class 
organizations  in  the  great  industrial  world, 
or  in  the  political,  religious,  and  moral  group- 
ings of  the  race,  or  why  we  have  experienced 
in  every  age  the  struggles  of  race  antago- 
nism and  social  friction?  Denominationalism 
is  in  itself  a  field  for  social  study  that  is 
extremely  fascinating  and  profitable  for  men 
of  the  Church  to-day.  Municipal,  State,  na- 
tional, and  international  conditions  and  needs 
are  available  for  our  study,  and  offer  a  wide 
field  for  social  investigation  by  men  who  have 
in  consciousness  the  world  program  of  Jesus. 

But  we  must  be  more  specific  in  our  treat- 
ment of  social  studies.  Conditions  of  living 
vary  greatly  in  different  communities,  so  that 
the  problems  of  the  congested  quarters  of  the 
great  cities,  the  uptown  districts,  the  suburbs, 
and  the  country  are  not  the  same,  and  these 


SOCIAL  STUDIES  105 

vary  according  to  climate,  race,  and  industrial 
conditions  in  the  respective  localities.  But  we, 
nevertheless,  discover  sooner  or  later  that  even 
our  specific  and  particular  problems  are  re- 
lated to  the  greater  world-problems  of  social 
welfare  and  social  control. 

Specific  Social  Studies 

I  know  of  no  better  way  of  calling  attention 
to  some  of  the  specific  problems  for  our  social 
study  by  the  men  of  our  churches  than  by  point- 
ing to  the  official  statement  of  the  General  Con- 
ference of  the  Methodist  Episcopal  Church  of 
1908,^  especially  the  paragraphs  on  "The  In- 
dustrial Situation,"  "The  Labor  Movement," 
"Conference  and  Conciliation,"  and  "The  So- 
cial Creed  of  Methodism."  Under  the  last 
heading  we  have  the  following : 

"The  Methodist  Episcopal  Church  stands: 
For  equal  rights  and  complete  justice  for  all 
men  in  all  stations  of  life. 

"For  the  principles  of  conciliation  and  ar- 
bitration in  industrial  disputes. 

"For  the  protection  of  the  worker  from 
dangerous  machinery,  occupational  diseases,  in- 
juries, and  mortality. 

*  *  For  the  abolition  of  child-labor. 

"For  such  regulation  of  the  conditions  of 


» See  "Methodist  Discipline";  also  "Federation  Publication,"  No. 
5,  p.  5. 


106  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEEK 

labor  for  women  as  shall  safeguard  the  physical 
and  moral  health  of  the  community. 

'^For  the  suppression  of  the  *  Sweating 
System. ' 

''For  the  gradual  and  reasonable  reduction 
of  hours  of  labor  to  the  lowest  practical  point, 
with  work  for  all,  and  for  that  degree  of  leisure 
for  all  which  is  the  condition  of  the  highest  hu- 
man life. 

''For  release  from  employment  one  day  in 
seven. 

"For  a  living  wage  in  every  industry. 

"For  the  highest  wage  that  each  industry 
can  afford,  and  for  the  most  equitable  division 
of  the  products  of  industry  that  can  ultimately 
be  devised. 

' '  For  the  recognition  of  the  Golden  Eule  and 
the  mind  of  Christ  as  the  supreme  law  of  so- 
ciety, and  the  sure  remedy  for  all  social  ills," 
etc. 

A  Special  Commission  on  Social.  Studies 

Now  in  every  church  community  there  are  to 
be  found  conditions  prevailing  that  involve  one 
or  more  of  these  points  of  our  social  creed,  and 
I  think  it  is  possible  for  the  men  of  the  Church 
to  take  up  in  a  systematized  way  the  study 
of  these  conditions  with  a  view  of  proposing 
methods  of  meeting  them. 

To  be  even  more  specific  with  respect  to  so- 


SOCIAL  STUDIES  107 

cial  studies  affecting  the  Church,  I  quote  from 
the  Conunission  to  the  Methodist  Federation 
for  Social  Service  given  by  the  last  General 
Conference  (1908) : 

''We  request  the  Federation  to  give  the  full- 
est possible  consideration  to  the  following  ques- 
tions, and  to  present  their  findings  thereon  as  a 
memorial  to  the  General  Conference  of  1912 
for  such  action  as  that  body  may  deem  wise : 

*'(1)  What  principles  and  measure  of  social 
reform  are  so  evidently  righteous  and  Chris- 
tian as  to  demand  the  specific  approval  and 
support  of  the  Church? 

*'(2)  How  can  the  agencies  of  the  Methodist 
Episcopal  Church  be  wisely  used  or  altered 
with  a  view  to  promoting  the  principles  and 
measures  thus  approved? 

*'  (3)  How  may  we  best  cooperate  in  this  be- 
half with  other  Christian  denominations? 

''(4)  How  can  our  course  of  ministerial 
study  in  seminaries  and  Conferences  be  modi- 
fied with  a  view  to  the  better  preparation  of  our 
preachers  for  efficiency  in  social  reform?" 

A  List  of  Specific  Problems  for  Social 
Studies 

Under  the  heading  ''Methods,"  in  its  pam- 
phlet on  "What  is  it?"  the  Methodist  Federa- 
tion for  Social  Service  furnishes  the  following 
list  of  problems  it  proposes  for  practical  study : 


108  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

''Associated  charities;  poverty,  its  relief  and 
l^revention ;  public  health ;  child  labor  and  child 
saving;  cooperation  and  profit-sharing;  the 
housing  of  the  people ;  wages  and  conditions  of 
labor ;  immigration  and  the  needs  of  the  foreign 
communities  in  the  cities;  marriage  and  di- 
vorce; municipal  ownership  and  control  of 
public  utilities;  social  and  college  settlements; 
temperance  reform;  organized  labor;  arbitra- 
tion and  conciliation;  religious  and  moral  edu- 
cation; in  short,  all  problems  which  touch  the 
daily  welfare  of  God's  children,  our  brethren." 

It  will  not  be  possible  for  the  members  of  a 
brotherhood,  men's  Bible  class,  or  any  similar 
organization  of  the  Church,  to  take  up  the 
study  of  all  these  problems  at  one  time,  nor  will 
it  be  necessary  in  any  single  case  to  do  so,  but 
in  every  community  some  one  or  more  of  these 
social  problems  are  pressing  for  solution. 

But  I  wish  to  consider  also  some  of  the  most 
characteristic  studies  that  relate  more  vitally 
to  church  work,  especially  in  our  day: 

1.  How  to  maintain  the  downtown  church,  or 
the  church  in  a  changing  population  of  the  tene- 
ment dwellers,  especially  where  most  of  them 
are  of  foreign  birth. 

2.  How  to  maintain  the  efficiency  of  the  coun- 
try church  in  the  community  where  the  popula- 
tion is  changing  as  in  no  other  locality,  and 
where  our  method  has  usually  been  that  of 


SOCIAL  STUDIES  109 

sending  men  who  were,  in  the  nature  of  the  case, 
less  fit  for  the  task  than  others,  not  only  with 
respect  to  age  (young  men  or  very  old  men), 
but  also  with  respect  to  preparation  and  ex- 
perience. 

3.  The  problem  of  race  prejudice  and  race 
antagonism,  not  only  between  Negro  and  white, 
but  also  between  Jew  and  Gentile,  Asiatic  and 
European,  Slav  and  Teuton,  Indian  and  white 
man,  and  many  others  that  seem  to  deny  the 
principle  of  universal  brotherhood  of  man. 
We  know  how  it  can  be  overcome  in  the  indi- 
vidual case  by  Christian  education  and  culture. 
Is  it  not  worth  while  to  study  how  it  may  be 
universally  destroyed? 

4.  Divorce  and  its  causes.  The  report  on 
marriage  and  divorce  for  the  years  1887-1906 
in  the  United  States,  recently  given  out  by  the 
Department  of  Commerce  and  Labor  through 
its  Bureau  of  the  Census,  gave  to  the  world 
some  startling  results,  as  to  the  frequency  of 
marital  disunion,  and  the  causes  therefor. 

5.  Social  diseases  and  their  relations  to  the 
family.  For  some  of  the  most  convincing  and 
startling  results  of  such  a  social  study  I  refer 
the  reader  to  the  paper  of  Prince  A.  Morrow, 
M.D.,  published  in  the  ''American  Journal  of 
Sociology,"  March,  1909.  The  two  that  exact 
the  greatest  tribute  of  human  life  and  hap- 
piness are  tuberculosis  and  gonococcus  infec- 


no  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

tion,  or  syphilis.  IMiile  these  are  subjects  for 
experts  of  the  medical  profession,  yet  we  all 
know  what  good  the  laymen  can  do  in  the  field 
of  prevention,  and  of  remedy,  and  it  is  here 
that  our  social  studies  need  to  be  pushed  with 
haste  and  energj^,  yet  with  wisdom  and  Chris- 
tian sympathy. 

6.  Child-labor,  child-saving,  and  the  juvenile 
court  and  probation  system,  and  their  results 
upon  modern  standards  of  life  and  morals. 
Men  are  idle  while  women  and  children  are  at 
work.  "Why  is  this ?  and  how  can  it  be  stopped? 
is  a  social  problem  of  the  greatest  modern  in- 
terest. 

7.  Organized  labor  and  its  claims,  its  possi- 
bilities for  good  as  well  as  for  evil,  when  under 
the  leadership  of  strong  men,  furnishes  another 
field  for  social  study  that  will  help  the  Church 
as  well  as  society  when  taken  up  seriously  by 
Christian  men  everywhere. 

8.  The  standards  of  living  in  the  cities  and 
in  the  country  and  their  relation  to  the  moral 
and  religious  life  of  the  people  in  the  com- 
munity. 

9.  The  problem  of  the  liquor  traffic:  How  it 
may  be  controlled  or  destroyed.  There  is  un- 
doubtedly enough  impulse  and  purpose  within 
the  churches  to-day,  if  properly  organized,  to 
win  in  the  struggle  against  the  saloon.  It  has 
been  done  in  many  States,  counties,  and  com- 


SOCIAL  STUDIES  111 

munities  in  recent  times.  There  is  need  yet  for 
study  as  to  how  the  whole  question  is,  after  all, 
to  be  solved  as  a  world  problem,  as  well  as  a 
local  or  national  one. 

10.  Social  education.  "We  have  just  begun  to 
see  the  possibilities  in  this  great  social  field. 
In  industrial  education,  moral  teaching,  and  re- 
ligious education  in  the  community  we  have 
another  social  study  of  supreme  importance  to 
the  Church. 

These  are  some  of  the  specific  problems  of 
social  significance  that  are  pressing  for  solution 
to-day.  We  have  not  the  space  for  details  in 
method,  even  if  they  were  desired,  but  in  clos- 
ing I  wish  to  say  that,  in  my  judgment,  the  best 
method  for  social  studies  is  that  of  field  work 
in  daily  contact  with  men  and  human  affairs, 
although  we  must  not  ignore  the  work  of  other 
men  recorded  in  useful  books  and  magazines 
for  reference.  These  will  help  us  to  see  beyond 
the  narrow  experiences  of  our  day's  work  in 
our  little  field,  and,  besides,  they  give  us  a 
wider  range  and  more  extended  vision. 


CHAPTER  IX 

FRIENDSHIP  AS  A  SOCIAL  FORCE 

The  social  engineer  must  understand  the  so- 
cial significance  of  friendship,  and  he  must 
master  the  art  of  making  friends. 

Dr.  Newell  Dwight  Hillis,  in  his  book  on 
''Man's  Value  to  Society,"  says:  "Destiny  is 
determined  by  friendship.  Fortune  is  made  or 
marred  when  the  youth  selects  his  companions. 
Friendship  has  ever  been  the  master  passion 
ruling  the  forum,  court,  and  the  camp. ' ' 

Some  one  has  said  that ' '  genius  is  a  function 
of  race  and  fame  a  function  of  history";  but 
when  we  come  to  study  the  causes  of  fame  we 
could  as  truthfully  say  that  it  is  the  function 
of  friendship,  for  there  has  been  no  great  man 
in  history  who  has  not  reached  his  place  of 
honor  by  the  gift  of  his  friends.  We  see  the 
working  of  this  social  force  in  the  State,  the 
Church,  and  in  the  social  life  of  the  community 
everywhere,  in  placing  men  and  women  to  the 
front  whether  they  are  worthy  or  unworthy. 

The  offices  of  the  State,  from  the  chief  execu- 
tive to  the  janitorship  of  the  lockup  of  some 
rural  village,  are  filled  by  men  who  never  could 
have  won  these  positions  save  by  this  social 

112 


FKIENDSHIP  AS  A  SOCIAL  FORCE        113 

force  of  friendsliip.  Bishops  and  prelates,  as 
well  as  pastors,  are  often  chosen  not  on  merits 
alone  but  by  their  friends.  In  social  clubs  men 
are  chosen  because  of  their  ability  to  win  the 
friendship  of  those  who  are  members,  and  the 
positions  of  honor  are  filled  on  the  same 
grounds.  In  all  the  great  modern  fields  of 
philanthropy  and  intelligent  organized  charity 
work,  this  is  the  greatest  social  dynamic  that 
keeps  men  and  women  bound  to  their  tasks  in 
the  social  uplift  of  the  masses.  It  is  this  social 
bond  that  neutralizes  the  dispersive  forces  of 
jealousy  and  hatred  and  holds  orderly  society 
together  in  family  and  social  groups.  It  is 
therefore  fitting  that  we  seek  for  the  sources 
of  this  important  factor  in  human  experience, 
and  endeavor  to  describe  some  of  its  more  in- 
teresting characteristics  in  order  that  the  so- 
cial worker  may  be  the  better  able  to  utilize  it 
in  the  performance  of  his  social  tasks. 

There  is  nothing  more  mysterious  and  yet 
more  masterful  than  friendship.  "We  know  full 
well  its  worth  in  life  and  its  power  to  spur  us 
to  action  in  another's  behalf,  and  yet  we  often 
question  why  we  have  the  friends  we  do  have 
and  not  the  friendship  of  others.  Bacon  says  in 
his  essay  on  ''Friendship,"  ''The  best  way  to 
represent  to  life  the  manifold  use  of  friendship 
is  to  cast  and  see  how  many  things  there  are 
which  a  man  cannot  do  himself ;  and  then  it  will 


114  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

appear  that  it  was  a  sparing  speech  of  the  an- 
cients to  say,  'That  a  friend  is  another  him- 
self,' for  that  a  friend  is  far  more  than  him- 
self."^ ''How  many  things  are  there  which  a 
man  cannot,  with  any  face  or  comeliness,  say  or 
do  himself?  A  man  can  scarcely  allege  his  own 
merits  with  modesty,  much  less  extol  them;  a 
man  cannot  sometimes  brook  to  supplicate  or 
beg;  and  a  number  of  the  like.  But  all  these 
things  are  graceful  in  a  friend's  mouth  which 
are  blushing  in  a  man's  own.  But  to  enumerate 
these  things  were  endless ;  I  have  given  the  rule, 
when  a  man  cannot  fitly  play  his  own  part,  if 
he  have  not  a  friend,  'he  may  quit  the  stage.'  " 

Friendship  is  a  paradox  among  the  social 
forces,  because  its  effects  are  both  dispersive 
and  unifying  to  society,  for  it  plays  the  most 
important  part  both  in  the  disintegration  and 
in  the  founding  of  the  family  group.  When  a 
boy  I  used  to  watch  with  eagerness  a  bluebird 
as  she  came  every  spring  to  build  her  nest  and 
rear  her  young  in  the  top  of  an  old  gatepost  in 
front  of  our  country  home.  It  was  my  delight 
to  climb  the  gate  and  peep  down  the  hole  in  the 
top  of  the  post  at  the  chubby,  featherless  crea- 
tures in  their  cozy  nest;  but  when  they  grew 
bigger  with  their  full  plumage,  and  flew  away 
to  their  Southern  clime,  I  was  sorry,  for  I 
missed  their  j)lumage  and  their  song.    But  when 

« Selby,  p.  72. 


FKIENDSHIP  AS  A  SOCIAL  FORCE        115 

I  grew  older  I  learned  that  a  higher  law  than 
love  for  the  parent  nest  hnpelled  them  to  fly 
away  and  leave  the  nest  in  the  gatepost — they 
went  away  to  build  other  nests  in  other  gate- 
posts, and  to  cheer  other  boys  with  their  plu- 
mage and  song. 

Likewise,  when  we  see  a  well-ordered  family, 
contented  and  happy  in  their  home,  we  would 
gladly  have  them  all  abide,  yet  we  know  full 
well  that  there  are  higher  claims  which  they 
must  meet  in  obedience  to  the  laws  of  their  be- 
ing and  of  the  social  order  in  which  they  find 
themselves,  making  it  necessary  for  children 
now  grown  up  to  leave  the  parental  fireside  and 
seek  other  places  of  abode  near  or  far.  This 
part  of  the  social  process  which  we  may  observe 
from  day  to  day  in  every  community  we  call  the 
disintegration  of  the  family.  There  are  many 
abnormal  factors  as  well  as  normal  laws  that 
contribute  to  this  result,  but  greater  than  all 
is  that  social  bond  we  call  friendship,  which 
often  leads  to  the  marriage  union. 

1.  The  basis  of  friendship.  One  of  the  most 
difficult  problems  of  social  philosophy  is  to  find 
a  satisfactory  theory  with  reference  to  the  basis 
of  friendship.  If  it  were  simply  a  matter  of 
friendship  between  the  members  of  the  sexes, 
it  would  be  a  matter  easy  to  explain;  but  we 
find,  on  the  contrary,  that  this  phenomenon  fre- 
quently exists  between  man  and  man,  woman 


116  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEEK 

aud  woman,  or  between  men  and  women  who 
have  no  thought  of  wedlock.  We  observe  also 
that  friendships  are  frequently  formed  between 
persons  of  opposite  temperaments,  or  between 
persons  who  are  unattractive,  friendships  under 
circumstances  so  various  that  one  is  often  led 
to  believe  it  to  be  merely  a  matter  of  chance. 

Various  explanations  of  the  phenomenon  of 
friendship  have  been  offered,  among  which  have 
been  the  following:  First,  that  based  on  the 
doctrine  of  the  transmigration  of  souls  in  which 
it  is  assumed  that  the  souls  of  persons  once  in 
social  relations  in  another  state  of  being  find 
their  fellow  souls  in  this  life.  In  the  absence 
of  proof  of  the  doctrine  of  transmigration,  this 
theory  lacks  the  dignity  of  an  explanation. 

Another  view  is  that  there  exists  in  members 
of  the  human  species  a  kind  of  social  affinity 
which  causes  two  persons  of  corresponding  ele- 
ments of  character  to  become  friends  on  ac- 
quaintance, much  in  the  same  way  as  two  chemi- 
cal elements  possessing  an  affinity  for  each 
other  would  unite  in  the  accidents  of  nature  or 
the  experiments  of  the  laboratory.  This  theory 
does  very  well  as  an  explanation  until  one  of 
these  friends  loses  his  social  affinity,  and  knocks 
his  neighbor  on  the  head,  sulks  in  solitude,  or 
forms  another  disturbing  combination  with  a 
new  ''affinity." 

Still  another  theory  is  that  based  upon  evolu- 


FRIENDSHIP  AS  A  SOCIAL  FORCE        117 

tion,  which  claims  that  man  originally  was  like 
other  animals,  living  solely  for  self,  until  in 
later  stages  of  his  development  higher  instincts 
similar  to  gregariousness  in  animals  led  him 
to  form  friendships  for  his  own  advantage; 
therefore,  according  to  this  view,  friendship  is 
based  upon  utility,  for  it  is  claimed  we  make 
friends  with  those  who  benefit  us  most.  But 
when  asked  to  explain  why  one  person  is 
friendly  to  another  who  may  have  become  a 
burden  and  a  care,  or  even  a  social  disadvan- 
tage, the  advocates  of  this  theory  reply  that 
along  with  these  instincts  of  friendship  have 
developed  other  attributes  of  character  such  as 
honor,  faithfulness,  constancy. 

One  other  view  is  that  based  upon  the  teach- 
ings of  revelation,  namely,  that  man  was 
created  and  endowed  with  a  nature  so  like  the 
Divine  that  had  he  remained  obedient  to  the 
moral  law  there  would  have  been  no  enmity  be- 
tween man  and  his  fellow  beings.  Love  and 
good  will  would  have  bound  together  the  indi- 
viduals of  the  human  race.  Sin  is  regarded  as 
the  disturbing  element  in  human  nature  and 
the  chief  cause  of  social  friction,  and  only  as  it 
is  eliminated  through  the  atonement  can  men 
come  to  love  the  unlovely  and  be  real  friends 
one  with  another.  This  view  implies  that  every 
human  being,  whether  high  or  low  in  the  scale 
of  life,  possesses  at  least  some  element  of  the 


118  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

divine  nature,  and  few  have  become  so  brutal 
but  that  they  are  capable  of  being  friendly  in 
some  degree. 

2.  Characteristics  of  true  friendship.  True 
friendship  is  constant.  As  one  of  the  old  prov- 
erbs puts  it,  "A  friend  loveth  at  all  times.'* 
There  are  false  friends  who  are  friendly  when 
we  are  in  prosperity,  but  who  desert  us  when 
adversity  overtakes  us — those  who  are  friendly 
when  we  are  well  spoken  of,  but  desert  us  when 
our  name  is  in  ill-repute;  but  the  true  friend 
remains  constant  under  such  circumstances  and 
stands  the  closer  by  when  adversity  comes. 

Eeal  friendship  has  a  positive  element.  If  a 
man  expects  to  win  friends  and  hold  them,  he 
must  be  friendly  to  others,  *^A  man  that  hath 
friends  must  show  himself  friendly. ' '  One  can- 
not expect  to  keep  friends  constant  unless  he 
reciprocates  their  good  fellowship;  there  must 
be  reciprocal  exchanges  of  feeling  and  actions 
or  friendship  will  not  last.  It  is  a  delicate  plant 
and  is  readily  destroyed  by  too  much  heat 
(anger),  or  dies  in  a  cold  atmosphere  (indiffer- 
ence). 

True  friendship  has  also  an  element  of 
sacrifice.  The  true  friend  will  make  sacrifice 
for  those  whom  he  loves.  Even  life  itself  is 
considered  not  too  great  a  sacrifice  for  the  altar 
of  friendship.  **  Greater  love  hath  no  man 
than  this,  that  a  man  lay  down  his  life  for  his 


FKIENDSHIP  AS  A  SOCIAL  FOKCE        119 

friends"  (Jesus).  In  feudal  days  many  a 
knight  gave  his  life  to  defend  his  overlord. 
Cases  are  not  wanting  to-day  where  life  is  im- 
periled for  the  sake  of  a  friend. 

Friendship  has  the  right  to  command.  **Ye 
are  my  friends,  if  ye  do  whatsoever  I  command 
you"  (Jesus).  Where  true  friendship  exists 
a  look,  a  nod,  or  a  whisper,  expressive  of  need, 
is  a  command  and  is  quickly  obeyed  by  the 
trusted  friend.  Obedience  is  the  test  of  friend- 
ship, but  it  is  a  dangerous  test  when  pushed 
too  far,  for  friendship,  however  true,  is  at  the 
breaking  point  when  it  becomes  a  tyranny. 

There  is  in  true  friendship  also  an  element 
of  frankness.  A  true  friend  will  tell  us  our 
faults  as  well  as  applaud  our  virtues.  *' Faith- 
ful are  the  wounds  of  a  friend"  (Proverbs). 
Those  who  prize  the  true  friend  should  receive 
correction  from  him  with  the  same  eagerness 
as  they  do  his  applause.  Bacon  says  truthfully, 
*'For  there  is  no  such  flatterer  as  is  a  man's  self, 
and  there  is  no  such  remedy  against  flattery  of 
a  man's  self  as  the  liberty  of  a  friend." 

''Take  to  heart  what  your  wife  says  to  you 
when  she  is  angry  with  you,"  was  the  advice 
once  given  to  me  by  a  friend  who  had  observed 
from  a  long  experience  as  a  man  of  affairs  how 
difficult  a  thing  it  is  for  a  man  to  see  his  own 
faults,  and  how  seldom  he  has  the  privilege  of 
hearing  them  rehearsed  by  his  friends  or  even 


120  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

his  enemies,  except  perhaps  by  the  latter  in  the 
midst  of  the  excitements  of  the  campaign,  when 
he  is  apt  to  think  with  self-complacency  that  his 
faults  have  been  greatly  exaggerated  for  cam- 
paign purposes  only.  So  it  seems  to  me  that 
one  of  the  greatest  gifts  of  friendship  is  the 
ability  to  give  or  take  a  rebuke  between  friends 
that  are  true.  In  fact,  it  never  pays  to  break 
with  a  friend  because  he  rebukes  you  when  in  a 
temper  or  mood.  He  will  relent  by  the  next 
meeting,  while  you  have  gained  by  the  expe- 
rience as  well  as  won  again  his  affection.  In 
fact,  I  count  to-day  among  my  best  friends  the 
men  with  whom  I  have  exchanged,  on  occasion, 
the  sharpest  words  of  frankness,  if  not  rebuke, 
to  say  the  least. 

3.  Christian  friendship.  Christian  friendship 
has  a  distinct  and  characteristic  element  which 
differentiates  it  from  all  other  forms  of  friend- 
ship in  that  it  is  exerted  toward  those  who  are 
unfriendly  and  even  toward  our  enemies — '*If 
thine  enemy  hunger,  feed  him ;  if  he  thirst,  give 
him  drink"  (Paul).  One  of  the  noblest  titles 
given  to  the  Son  of  man,  the  Founder  of  Chris- 
tianity, was  that  heard  frequently  on  the  lips 
of  the  common  people,  **He  was  the  friend  of 
sinners."  As  a  social  force  Christian  friend- 
ship became  the  greatest  social  dynamic  of  his- 
tory. In  it  there  lies  a  deep  and  helpful  phi- 
losophy, for  we  are  taught  to  take  the  initiative 


FEIENDSHIP  AS  A  SOCIAL  FOECE        121 

in  showing  ourselves  friendly  to  the  friendless. 
We  have  it  expressed  in  the  Golden  Enle, 
"Therefore  all  things  whatsoever  ye  would 
that  men  should  do  to  you,  do  ye  even  so  to 
them."  In  this  we  see  friendship  firmly  estab- 
lished on  an  altruistic  basis,  free  from  mere 
self-interest  or  utility  at  first  hand,  and  taking 
on  that  broader  scope  which  embraces  the  en- 
tire moral  order  of  the  world.  It  has  in  view 
the  social  uplift  and  betterment  of  all  men,  in 
bringing  in  a  world-kingdom  of  humanity 
which  is  the  highest  social  ideal  for  the  race, 
seen  in  vision  by  the  Hebrew  prophets,  preached 
by  the  greatest  of  the  apostles,  and  beautifully 
expressed  by  one  of  our  poets  as  "the  parlia- 
ment of  man  and  the  federation  of  the  world. '  * 


CHAPTER  X 

SOCIAL  LEADERSHIP 

"When  we  look  all  about  us  to-day  at  the  com- 
plex social  order  in  which  we  are  living,  the  net- 
work of  associations  in  which  men  are  grouped 
and  regrouped  in  response  to  certain  needs  felt 
and  clearly  defined ;  when  we  view  the  organized 
character  of  the  evils  that  destroy  human  life 
and  cause  untold  misery  to  homes  and  indi- 
viduals, we  are  led  to  see  at  once  that  one  of 
the  greatest  tasks  the  Church  of  to-day  has  to 
perform  is  the  furnishing  of  social  leaders  in 
the  struggle  for  good  citizenship  and  moral  re- 
form. 

In  talking  to  a  socialistic  labor  leader  some 
time  ago  in  one  of  our  great  industrial  centers, 
he  said  that  he  believed  the  greatest  service  the 
Church  could  render  the  modern  labor  move- 
ment was  the  furnishing  of  leaders  with  some 
definite  aim  for  the  welfare  of  the  workingmen 
in  this  world,  for  what  they  need  most  is  to  be 
shown  how  to  make  this  world  more  like  heaven. 
We  wish  in  this  chapter  to  show  where  such 
leadership  is  needed  and  how  it  may  be  devel- 
oped by  our  brotherhoods  and  other  religious 
social  organizations. 

122 


SOCIAL  LEADEESHIP  123 

In  the  Field  of  City  Government 

The  great  struggle  of  the  Church  in  all  ages 
has  been  in  the  cities,  and  at  no  period  of  his- 
tory has  that  struggle  been  more  clearly  under- 
stood by  men  of  keen  insight  in  religious  work 
than  it  is  to-day. 

The  Church  inaugurates  social  reforms  and 
yet  is  often  compelled  to  leave  to  a  boodling, 
grafting  administration  the  task  of  carrying  out 
those  reforms.  In  other  cases  where  church- 
men have  been  elected  they  have  proven  them- 
selves to  be  so  inefficient  in  sound  leadership 
that  they  have  lost  for  the  Church  the  benefits 
of  a  reform  movement,  and  the  city  has  been 
plunged  back  into  the  old  regime  by  the  votes 
of  those  who  cannot  excuse  inefficient  service 
even  when  rendered  by  a  pious  man.  Hence  it 
seems  that  in  this  field  one  of  the  first  tasks  of 
the  Church — represented  by  its  civic  and  social 
groups  in  the  brotherhood  movement — is  to  de- 
velop for  the  tasks  of  government  that  class  of 
men  who  will  make  good  the  reforms  the  Church 
must  have  in  order  to  maintain  her  life  in  the 
community. 

Now,  I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  the  Church  is 
to  go  into  politics  as  such,  but  I  do  say  that 
one  of  the  chief  tasks  of  the  Church  is  to  create 
issues  that  the  political  party  that  hopes  to  suc- 
ceed must  adopt,  and  to  train  men  for  civic  work 


124  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

that  the  same  party  cannot  afford  not  to  nomi- 
nate and  elect.  So  it  seems  to  me  that  our 
brotherhood  chapters  and  men's  clubs  could 
well  afford  to  take  up  this  problem  of  social 
leadership  in  city  government  as  a  part  of  their 
legitimate  program. 

In  Legislation  and  Administration 

In  the  second  place,  social  leadership  is 
needed  by  the  Church  in  the  field  of  legislation 
and  in  the  administration  and  execution  of  the 
laws  that  control  the  people.  In  this  field  suc- 
cess can  be  reached  by  first  directing  our  atten- 
tion to  public  opinion  and  social  custom,  which 
lie  at  the  foundations  of  much  of  our  lawmak- 
ing, and  have  much  to  do  also  with  obedience 
of  and  respect  for  the  law.  It  is  a  very  diffi- 
cult thing  for  any  man,  however  just,  to  exe- 
cute the  law  impartially  when  he  is  handicap- 
ped by  a  boisterous  public  demand  for  some- 
thing else.  As  a  distinguished  district  attorney 
some  years  ago  in  New  York  said  with  refer- 
ence to  the  trial  of  a  notorious  case,  ''Gentle- 
men, we  have  come  to  the  spectacle  of  a  trial  by 
newspapers,  rather  than  trial  by  the  courts." 
Here,  then,  is  another  field  where  the  Church 
can  do  much  toward  the  development  in  every 
community  of  social  leadership  that  will  count 
heavily  in  the  establishment  of  the  kingdom  of 
righteousness. 


SOCIAL  LEADEKSHIP  125 

In  the  Field  of  Oegaxized  Industry 

A  third  field  where  the  Church  needs  to  be 
represented  in  social  leadership  is  that  of  or- 
ganized industry.  In  years  joast  even  good  peo- 
ple who  desire  to  be  impartial  in  their  judg- 
ments have  been  so  appalled  by  the  manifesta- 
tions of  power  by  organized  labor  in  times  of 
strikes,  boycotts,  and  lockouts,  that  they  have, 
without  investigating  the  real  causes  of  the  dis- 
turbance, decided  the  case  against  the  laboring 
men,  and  have  been  ever  after  biased  in  their 
opinions  of  the  entire  labor  movement.  It  is 
about  time  for  all  good  people  to  begin  to  study 
the  real  causes  of  industrial  conflicts  and  also 
to  formulate  some  saner  notions  as  to  the  pos- 
sibilities for  good,  not  only  to  the  laboring  men 
themselves  but  also  for  the  employers  and  the 
public,  in  the  organized  movement  among  men 
for  their  betterment  as  a  class,  not  only  in  the 
conditions  of  work,  but  also  in  citizenship,  and 
ultimately  in  all  that  pertains  to  the  welfare  of 
society  as  a  whole,  not  excluding  the  religious 
interest,  that  is  taking  on  organized  forms  of 
expression. 

I  believe  the  time  will  come  when  the  labor 
movement,  under  intelligent  moral  leadership, 
which  it  already  has  in  a  marked  degree,  will 
wage  war  against  social  vice  and  crime  as 
strenuously  as  it    ever  has  against  an  unjust 


126  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

employer  or  a  soulless  corporation.*  "We  dis- 
cover here,  it  seems  to  me,  one  of  the  greatest 
fields  for  Church  activity  in  seeking  to  make 
that  social  leadership  in  all  industrial  centers 
an  ally  of  all  the  moral  and  religious  forces  of 
the  community.  The  men's  organizations  will 
be  wise  in  encouraging  and  supporting  such  of 
their  members  who  have  an  ambition  for  leader- 
ship in  this  the  greatest  movement  of  our  age. 
Leaders  of  organized  labor,  as  well  as  leaders 
of  organized  capital,  must  be  men  who  com- 
prehend their  mutual  relations,  and  the  rela- 
tions of  both  to  the  great  public  who  use  the 
goods  produced  for  the  market  by  industrial 
concerns.  In  recent  years  we  have  witnessed 
the  utilization  of  such  leadership  in  this  field  as 
never  before  in  the  case  of  men  who,  by  their 
power  of  social  perspective  and  sense  of  social 
justice,  have  averted  industrial  warfare  by  wise 
counsels  in  directing  others  in  the  pursuits  of 
peace. 

The  Field  of  Organized  Chaeity 

Still  another  field  where  the  Church's  in- 
terest in  social  leadership  is  strong  is  that  of 
managing  organized  charity  and  philanthropy. 
Never  before  were  there  evident  so  many  great 
gifts  and  foundations  for  the  betterment  and 
welfare  of  the  dependent,  defective,  and  delin- 

»  See  discussion  in  Chapter  XX. 


SOCIAL  LEADERSHIP  127 

quent  classes.  In  this  field  the  Church  has  the 
keenest  interest  and  has  ever  furnished  some 
of  the  best  workers.  So  in  all  the  fields  of 
religious  activity  and  education  there  is  need 
to-day  for  men  of  social  training  for  the  tasks 
of  utilizing  the  forces  available  for  social 
progress. 


CHAPTER  XI 

THE  CHURCH'S  PERIL 

Theeb  are  some  folks  who  to-day  are  seri- 
ously concerned  about  what  they  call  the 
''peril"  of  the  Church,  and  yet  when  you  ques- 
tion them  as  to  what  it  is  they  seem  unable  to 
define  it ;  and  yet  they  assert  that  they  feel  the 
Church  is  in  peril.  The  social  engineer  should 
inquire  the  causes  of  this  fear,  and  endeavor 
to  show  what  these  expressions  of  fear  mean; 
and  if  he  finds  there  is  a  real  peril  threatening 
the  Church,  he  should  seek  to  know  how  it  may 
be  averted. 

What  Is  a  Perh^? 

Our  ordinary  notions  of  peril  involve  the 
conception  of  something  alarmingly  and  immi- 
nently threatening  at  the  moment,  like  an  ava- 
lanche in  the  path  of  a  mountain  climber,  or  a 
rushing  torrent  to  the  inhabitants  of  a  village 
in  the  valley  below  the  broken  dam.  But,  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  a  peril  may  be  even  greater 
where  seemingly  there  is  nothing  impending; 
for  instance,  the  peril  of  diseased  milk  to  the 
babies  of  the  tenement,  of  poisoned  food  to  the 
workingman  (before  pure-food  legislation)  who 

128 


THE  CHURCH'S  PERIL  129 

had  to  buy  it  in  cans  rather  than  in  juicy  beef- 
steaks, because  of  his  meager  wage ;  the  gentle 
buzz  and  bite  of  an  infectious  mosquito  to  the 
unsuspecting  dwellers  along  the  levees,  or  the 
deadly  bite  of  the  tsetse  fly  in  the  camp  of  the 
ivory-hunters  in  Africa,  or  the  bacilli  of  tuber- 
culosis to  the  workers  in  the  vitiated  air  of  the 
sweatshop.  In  fact,  a  man  to-day  may  be  in  as 
imminent  peril  of  the  hatpin  of  some  feminine 
strap-hanger  in  the  rush  of  the  subway  as  he 
would  be  of  the  surgeon's  needle  in  an  opera- 
tion for  cataract. 

So  I  believe  we  are  not  to  look  to-day  for  the 
greatest  perils  of  the  Church  from  the  gates  of 
hell,  for  we  have  the  promise  that  '^they  shall 
not  prevail,"  but,  rather,  in  our  lack  of  ability 
to  marshal  our  forces  for  victory;  not  that  she 
shall  meet  defeat  in  this  field  or  that  field  of 
missionary  enterprise,  but,  rather,  that  she  may 
miss  altogether  the  meaning  of  the  word  of  com- 
mand from  the  Captain  of  our  salvation. 

Failure  to  Attract  the  Multitudes 

One  of  the  chief  phases  of  this  modern  peril 
is  our  failure  to  make  the  church  attractive  to 
the  multitudes — not  the  peril  of  some  Etruscan 
maiden  in  the  raid  of  the  Sabine  warriors,  but, 
rather,  that  of  some  modern  maiden  who  ceases 
to  receive  the  attention  of  her  suitors. 

Talk  with  the  preachers  and  earnest  laymen 


130  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

in  our  cities  and  suburban  towns,  and  most  of 
them  will  tell  you  they  are  putting  up  a  con- 
tinual struggle  to  keep  their  congregations, 
especially  during  the  evening  services,  respect- 
able in  size.  So  it  seems  to  me,  as  I  walk  the 
streets  of  our  great  teeming  cities,  with  their 
places  of  amusement  crowded,  the  parks  and 
breathing  places  of  the  multitudes  filled  even 
during  the  hours  of  service  in  the  churches, 
that  in  some  way  we  have  not  yet  learned  the 
full  significance  of  Paul's  words  of  instruction 
to  the  young  preacher,  Timothy,  ''to  adorn  the 
doctrine  of  Christ."  To  me  the  greatest  peril 
the  Church  faces  to-day  is  that  we  will  fail  to 
make  her  courts  attractive  to  the  multitudes 
that  need  her  message. 

During  the  Hudson-Fulton  celebration  in 
New  York  city  we  saw  simple  historical  facts 
and  incidents  of  our  American  history  so 
adorned  that  actually  millions  of  people — men, 
women,  and  children,  even  mothers  with  babies 
in  their  arms,  from  the  East  Side  and  the  West 
Side — so  crowded  the  line  of  march  that 
they  literally  risked  their  lives  to  see  the 
parade,  and  as  I  viewed  it  from  a  window 
in  the  Methodist  Book  Concern  building  at 
Twentieth  Street  and  Fifth  Avenue,  I  thought 
within  me,  "Would  that  we  had  the  gift  so  to 
adorn  the  historical  facts  of  our  precious  faith, 
and  make  the  personality  of  Jesus  Christ  so  at- 


THE  CHUKCH'S  PEKIL  131 

tractive  in  all  our  ministry,  that  we  could  win 
the  multitudes  like  that,  or  at  least  have  it  said 
of  us  as  it  was  of  him,  'The  common  people 
heard  him  gladly.'  " 

The  Spikitual  Death  Bate 

Another  phase  of  the  Church's  peril,  it  seems 
to  me,  is  the  appalling  spiritual  death  rate  we 
find  in  all  our  Church  statistics  when  properly 
considered.  We  have  the  young  life  of  the  com- 
munity with  us  in  the  Sunday  school,  baptized 
and  enrolled  as  members  of  the  kingdom  of  God, 
and  yet  how  many  slip  out  during  the  period  of 
adolescence  and  are  never  reclaimed!  If  you 
are  not  convinced  of  this  fact,  count  the  boys 
and  young  men,  and  even  the  girls,  on  the 
streets  in  your  town  during  the  hours  of  Sun- 
day school  and  church  service. 

Then,  too,  we  have  a  number  of  backsliders 
after  revival  meetings  that  aggregate  almost 
as  many,  if  not  more  in  some  cases,  than  those 
we  hold  as  faithful  members.  An  experienced 
worker  in  the  city  of  New  York,  of  wide  and 
ripe  experience  in  rescue  mission  work,  told  me 
that  at  least  four  out  of  five  of  all  the  men  re- 
claimed on  the  Bowery  had  been  at  some  time 
actively  connected  with  some  church  or  Sun- 
day school.  And  he  further  added  that  in  visit- 
ing many  prisons  and  questioning  the  prisoners, 
he  found  that  many  of  these  also  had  been  at 


132  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

one  time  attendants  at  church  services,  either 
in  this  country  or  the  old  country. 

Now,  is  it  not  time  for  the  brotherhoods  and 
other  social  organizations  of  the  Church  to 
make  a  serious  search  for  the  causes  of  this 
spiritual  death  rate,  and  seek  the  means  and 
methods  of  reducing  it?  It  can  be  done  by 
placing  such  emphasis  upon  preventive  salva- 
tion, by  socializing  our  activities  in  making  for 
them  a  better  environment,  as  we  have  in  get- 
ting the  children  into  the  Sunday  school,  and 
the  adults  by  rescue  work  and  revival  effort. 
We  should  do  this  and  not  leave  the  other  un- 
done. 

Failure  to  Master  the  Modern  Social 
Movement 

In  the  last  chapter  I  mentioned  the  furnish- 
ing of  social  leadership  as  the  Church's  Op- 
portunity. To  fail  to  lead  the  modern  social 
movement  by  failing  to  furnish  leaders  in  the 
social  crisis  of  our  day  is  another  phase  of  the 
Church's  peril  that  we  should  seriously  con- 
sider as  men.*  In  fact,  I  can  see  no  other 
reason  greater  than  this  for  social  engineering 
being  organized,  and  I  can  conceive  of  no 
greater  task  for  our  men 's  organizations  to  take 
up  in  every  community  than  this. 


1  Compare  Mott,  John  R.,  "The  Future  Leadership  of  the  Church." 
Part  II. 


THE  CHURCH'S  PERIL  133 

It  would  be  a  great  pity  if  the  movement  of 
organized  labor  should  get  the  notion  that  we 
were  not  interested  in  their  cause  for  the  wel- 
fare of  their  families,  and  it  would  be  equally. 
a  great  pity  if  the  organizations  of  employers 
should  cease  to  find  sympathy  from  us  in  their 
difficult  tasks  of  adjustment  of  business  to  meet 
the  demands  of  the  changing  social  order.  This 
is  another  phase  of  the  Church's  peril — that  we 
fail  to  grasp  our  opportunity  to  lead,  and  be 
like  a  voice  crying  in  the  wilderness,  not  know- 
ing what  or  whose  way  we  are  exhorting  the 
people  to  prepare.  This  to  me  is  our  supreme 
task  for  the  present — to  address  ourselves  to  a 
study  of  these  social  phases  of  the  Church's 
peril,  and  by  diligent  social  engineering  master 
them. 


PART  II 
THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER  AT  WORK 


CHAPTER  XII 

THE  MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SERVICE 

The  movement  for  social  service  among  the 
various  denominations  means  that  the  social 
consciousness  of  the  Church  has  been  aroused 
to  the  necessity  of  doing  something  heroic  to 
regenerate  the  changing  social  order  by  bet- 
tering the  conditions  of  living  where  the  life 
struggle  and  class  conflict  are  the  most  threaten- 
ing to  the  whole  structure  of  Christian  civiliza- 
tion ;  a  serious  search  for  a  social  antitoxin  that 
shall  destroy  the  toxic  effects  in  the  social  body 
caused  by  social  sinning;  an  earnest  attempt 
to  apply  the  preventive  measures  of  the  gospel 
to  the  problem  of  sin  as  well  as  the  redemptive 
agencies  of  the  Word  of  God.  It  means  organi- 
zation to  discover  the  causes  of  social  ills,  and 
an  organized  effort  to  destroy  sin  at  its  source. 
It  means  by  earnest  endeavor  to  save  human 
life  by  regenerating  and  transforming  the  en- 
vironment that  pollutes  and  destroys  human 
life.  It  is  our  endeavor  not  so  much  to  save 
from  the  slum  as  it  is  a  determination  to  remove 
the  slum ;  not  alone  the  screening  of  the  children 
from  infectious  mosquitoes,  but  filling  up  the 
pools  where  they  breed.     It  means  that  the 

137 


138  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

Churcli  has  to-day  the  opportunity  within  her 
grasp  to  extend  the  consciousness  of  brother- 
hood among  all  the  social  groups  now  antago- 
nistic and  competitive,  and  to  give  unity  of 
ideals  to  the  nations  of  the  world,  so  that  wars 
may  cease.  And,  further,  she  has  the  social  pro- 
gram in  the  teaching  of  Jesus,  when  rightly  in- 
terpreted, to  socialize  the  races  of  men  in  con- 
sciousness, so  that  prejudice  and  race  conflicts 
shall  be  done  away  and  the  world  kingdom  of 
redeemed  humanity  be  made  possible  of  reali- 
zation. 

But  to  be  more  specific;  we  do  not  mean  by 
social  service  anything  like  what  are  known  as 
church  socials,  pink  teas,  tableaux,  church  sup- 
pers, however  useful  they  may  be  in  developing 
sociability  among  the  people  of  the  neighbor- 
hood; nor  do  we  mean  any  form  of  religious 
vaudeville  by  which  a  few  dimes  and  dollars  are 
gotten  into  the  church  treasury;  but  we  mean, 
rather,  those  serious  altruistic  activities  of 
Christian  people  that  help  somebody  out  of  diffi- 
culty, and  better  the  moral  tone  of  the  com- 
munity, and  advance  its  economic  and  social 
welfare — such  activities  as  are  carried  out  by 
an  organized  enlightened  public  opinion  through 
the  agency  of  trained  men  and  women  with  the 
group  consciousness  back  of  them  as  an  en- 
couragement and  support  in  the  performance  of 
hard  tasks.    It  means  also  the  conduct  of  indi- 


MEANING  OF    SOCIAL  SEKVICE  139 

viduals  with  a  social  perspective  that  sees  be- 
yond the  immediate  act  to  the  social  values  that 
are  created  by  the  social  energies  released  by 
the  initial  deed. 

Illustrations  op  Social  Service 

The  act  of  the  good  Samaritan  was  an  act  of 
individual  social  service  because  it  furnished 
a  basis  for  imitation  for  others,  so  that  Jesus 
could  say  to  the  young  lawyer  who  had  ques- 
tioned him  as  to  who  is  one's  neighbor,  **Go  and 
do  thou  likewise."  Neighborliness  in  Jesus 's 
mind  meant  the  conduct  of  the  good  Samaritan, 
for  he  put  the  emphasis  there  when  he  asked, 
''Who  was  neighbor  to  the  man  who  fell  among 
the  robbers'?"  But  the  social  idea  can  be 
greatly  extended  by  us  in  modern  times  by  the 
concept  of  organizing  a  posse  to  capture  the 
robbers,  or  an  organized  police  patrol,  so  that 
the  way  to  Jericho  may  be  made  safe  for  other 
travelers. 

Again,  we  may  illustrate  social  service  by  the 
efficient  policy  of  the  chief  of  the  board  of  health 
in  one  of  our  progressive  cities,  who  prosecuted 
the  milk  dealers  who  furnished  diseased  milk 
to  the  homes  of  the  poor,  resulting  in  an  in- 
creased infant  mortality,  instead  of  being  con- 
tent in  thinking  his  duty  to  the  city  ended  with 
the  burying  of  the  dead,  the  victims  of  disease 
produced  by  impure  milk,  or  in  helping  the 


140  THE  SOCIAL  ENGIA^EER 

widow  or  bereaved  father  to  bear  the  expense. 
So  that  now  in  this  same  city  the  infant  mor- 
tality has  been  reduced  to  the  normal  rate. 

Social  service  means  the  placing  of  a  danger 
sign  on  the  tailgate  of  an  ice  wagon  as  well 
as  the  carrying  of  flowers  and  jellies  to  the 
crippled  boy  in  the  home  or  hospital  who  un- 
wittingly rode  behind  where  there  was  no  sign 
and  got  crushed ;  or  by  organized  public  senti- 
ment in  enactment  of  pure-food  laws  and  their 
enforcement,  as  well  as  sick  benefits  to  those 
disabled  for  work  by  eating  poisoned  meats; 
or  by  organized  effort  against  the  saloon  as  a 
social  evil  rather  than  diatribes  on  the  weak- 
ness of  human  nature  in  dealing  with  the  man 
in  the  gutter. 

Social  service  means  not  merely  charities  and 
philanthropies  that  care  for  the  victims  of  vice 
and  poverty,  but  also  intelligent  organized 
effort  to  eliminate  the  causes  that  make  these 
necessary,  and  it  means,  as  well,  a  readjustment 
of  our  economic  and  industrial  system  by  wise 
statesmanship  through  social  control,  so  that 
the  profits  of  social  production  may  be  more 
equitably  distributed  to  all  classes  of  society. 
Social  service  in  real  charity  is  implied  in  the 
words  of  Jesus  quoted  only  by  Paul,  as  the 
other  writers  of  the  New  Testament  seem  to 
have  overlooked  them — *'It  is  more  blessed  to 
give  than  to  receive."     Why?     Because  the 


MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SEEVICE  141 

giver  has  the  economic  advantage  in  that  he  is 
able  to  support  himself  and  has  a  surplus  to 
give  to  others,  and  in  the  giving  is  seeking  to 
get  his  neighbor  into  the  same  economic  rank. 
Giving  with  any  other  motive  may  be  charitable, 
but  it  is  not  in  the  truest  sense  social. 

Individual  Sociax.  Service 

We  mean  by  individual  social  service  an  act 
performed  by  an  individual  that  at  the  moment 
has  no  special  social  significance,  but  as  a  pre- 
ventive measure  may  have  very  important  so- 
cial consequences  for  good.  For  example,  it  is 
said  that  a  little  boy  once  wrote  an  essay  on  pins 
in  which  he  affirmed  that  they  had  saved  the 
lives  of  many  children  "by  the  not  swallowing 
of  'em,"  by  which  it  is  meant  that  the  preven- 
tive act  of  the  mother  in  removing  the  pin  from 
the  reach  of  her  babies,  or  the  removing  of  a 
tack  from  the  floor  where  the  bare  feet  might 
be  pierced,  performed  a  real  social  service  for 
the  family  in  avoiding  the  expense  of  medical 
attention,  if  not  even  death  from  tetanus  or 
blood  poisoning.  I  know  a  young  woman  in  the 
country  in  one  of  the  Southern  States  who 
nearly  bled  to  death  when  she  was  a  girl  of 
thirteen  by  cutting  her  foot  with  a  broken  bottle 
in  the  grass  while  running  after  a  chicken  she 
was  told  to  catch  for  dinner.  The  old  notion  of 
social  service  would  be  represented  by  the  mini- 


142  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

ature  Sheridan  ride  of  a  neighbor  to  the  village 
near  by  for  the  doctor,  or  the  servant  who 
gathered  cobwebs  from  the  barn  to  stanch  the 
blood,  or  by  the  good  sister  in  the  church  who 
came  during  convalescence  from  the  weakened 
state  due  to  shock  and  loss  of  blood  with  a  glass 
of  jelly  or  a  custard  now  and  then;  but  the 
modern  notion  of  social  service  would  be  rep- 
resented by  removing  the  bottle  from  the  grass 
before  the  accident  occurred.  If  all  the  chil- 
dren could  be  taught  the  social  significance  of 
such  an  act,  how  much  preventive  social  work 
could  we  not  accomplish  in  every  community! 
I  have  a  friend  filling  an  office  of  great  respon- 
sibility and  dignity  in  the  church  who  told  me 
that  he  had  made  it  the  habit  of  his  life  never 
to  pass  by  a  banana  peel  on  the  street  without 
removing  it  to  some  place  where  no  one  could 
be  caused  to  fall  by  slipping  upon  it,  because  he 
had  once  seen  a  friend  of  his  severely  injured 
by  such  a  simple  mishap.  Now,  there  is  not 
much  honor  attached  to  such  an  individual  act 
when  viewed  by  the  unthinking  crowd  on  the 
streets  of  a  city,  but  when  viewed  with  the  so- 
cial perspective  of  an  accident,  the  ambulance, 
the  surgical  operation,  the  expense,  the  pos- 
sible pauperizing  of  the  family  without  the 
breadwinner,  and  all  else  that  may  result  from 
a  fall  by  such  an  ignominious  thing  as  a  banana 
-peel,  we  come  to  see  that  an  individual  act  of 


MEANING  OF  SOCIAL  SERVICE  143 

this  character  has  tremendous  social  value,  and 
should  be  regarded  worthy  of  imitation. 

A  young  i:>reacher,  recently  graduated  from 
Drew  Theological  Seminary,  while  preaching 
Sundays  as  a  supply  at  an  appointment  in  a 
country  town,  told  me  that  on  the  way  home 
from  church  one  day  he  walked  to  the  middle  of 
the  road  and  kicked  some  broken  fragments 
of  glass  into  the  gutter,  and  a  friend  with  him 
remarked,  "What  did  you  do  that  for?'* 
**Why,"  said  the  preacher,  "I  ride  a  wheel 
sometimes,  and  I  did  it  to  save  a  puncture  in 
some  other  fellow's  wheel."  Now,  such  a  deed 
has  a  greater  social  significance  when  the  *' fel- 
low" in  mind  is  a  messenger  boy  who  is  making 
a  living  with  his  wheel,  perhaps  for  a  widowed 
mother  and  a  group  of  small  children  at  his 
house. 

I  confess  I  cannot  pass  by  a  nail  with  the 
sharp  end  up  through  a  piece  of  board  without 
bending  it  down,  because  I  have  more  than  once 
seen  a  good  horse  ruined  by  picking  up  such  a 
nail  in  the  quick  of  his  hoof,  so  that  he  had  to 
be  dispensed  with.  Now,  this  means  more 
socially  when  the  horse  in  mind  is  the  means  of 
support  of  a  drayman  and  his  little  family,  when 
the  cost  of  a  new  horse  means  the  verge  of  pov- 
erty for  a  whole  family.  So  we  might  go  on 
and  illustrate  in  many  ways  acts  that  are  seem- 
ingly  insignificant   in   themselves,   but   which 


144  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

when  performed  by  the  individuals  of  a  whole 
community  mean  much  for  the  social  welfare  of 
the  manj^  We  have  purposely  put  emphasis 
here  upon  the  negative  side  of  individual  social 
service  as  acts  of  social  prevention  of  social 
ills ;  but  those  of  a  positive  character  are  as  im- 
pressive, and  play  an  important  role  in  the  esti- 
mate we  place  upon  the  social  efficiency  of  the 
individual  in  the  community. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

HOW   TO   WORK  THE    SPECIFIC   FIELDS    OF    SOCIAL 
SERVICE 

We  have  now  come  to  that  part  of  our  study 
that  involves  the  more  specific  and  practical 
phases  of  social  engineering. 

We  hear  men  on  all  sides  in  these  days  ask- 
ing the  man  who  is  talking  or  writing  about 
the  Church  and  the  modern  social  movement 
how  they  are  to  do  the  things  he  has  suggested. 
Now,  for  some  men  it  is  sufficient  to  show  them 
the  tools  or  the  machinery  and  the  fields  where 
work  is  to  be  done  and  tell  them  to  do  it;  but 
for  others  it  is  necessary  to  plow  a  few  times 
round  until  they  see  our  method ;  or  it  is  neces- 
sary to  walk  around  with  them  and  keep  hold  of 
the  plow  until  they  get  courage  to  try  alone. 
In  the  fields  of  social  service  it  is  not  necessary 
to  more  than  awaken  the  social  consciousness 
of  some  men  so  that  they  see  the  methods  al- 
ready being  used  with  success  in  the  social  field, 
while  with  others  we  must  go  still  further  and 
actually  work  the  methods  we  propose  in  their 
very  presence  before  they  seem  to  be  able  to 
grasp  their  significance.  There  are  still  others 
who  know  pretty  well  the  fields  for  service,  and 

145 


146  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

are  acquainted  with  the  machinery  available, 
but  seem  to  continue  to  ask  questions,  or  wait 
for  some  one  else  to  set  the  pace,  merely  for 
the  sake  of  killing  time  or  shirking  respon- 
sibility. They  are  like  the  man  who  was  so 
afraid  of  breaking  his  scythe  that  he  hung  it  up 
in  a  tree  and  waited  for  the  frost  to  cut  the 
weeds  he  intended  to  mow. 

It  is  wonderful  sometimes  how  readily  meth- 
ods develop  for  the  man  who  is  busy  with  the 
doing  of  his  task.  Take,  for  example,  the  work 
of  a  judge  of  the  juvenile  court  in  one  of 
our  cities  in  dealing  with  boys  arrested  for 
stealing  junk  from  the  railroads.  In  ques- 
tioning the  boys  as  to  why  they  were  so  en- 
gaged in  lawless  conduct  he  ran  across  an 
organized  trafi&c  of  the  junk  dealers  themselves, 
and  his  method  was  changed  to  include  the  fin- 
ing and  imprisonment  of  the  junk  dealers  who 
were  guilty  as  the  prime  cause  of  this  kind  of 
juvenile  delinquency,  and  by  so  doing  he  de- 
stroyed at  the  roots  a  prolific  cause  of  juvenile 
crime  in  that  city. 

Now,  any  man  who  is  seriously  interested  in 
the  boys  of  his  community,  after  knowing  of  this 
fact  in  the  experience  of  the  judge,  would  not 
need  to  be  told  that  he  could  save  his  boys 
from  the  temptation  of  the  junk  dealers  by  sup- 
plying them  with  the  equivalents  of  the  things 
they  sold  junk  to  acquire — a  trip  to  the  State 


HOW  TO  WOKK  147 

fair,  a  ticket  to  the  animal  show,  the  dues  for 
the  gymnasium  classes  at  the  Young  Men's 
Christian  Association,  or  the  purchase  price  of 
some  popular  toy.  In  fact,  most  of  our  prac- 
tical problems  of  social  service  resolve  them- 
selves into  the  handling  of  those  who  are  causal 
to  the  ills  we  are  seeking  to  correct,  and  the 
preventive  work  among  those  who  have  not  yet 
been  led  astray,  as  well  as  the  sympathetic 
treatment  of  those  who  have  been  overtaken  in 
trespasses  as  victims  of  the  organized  wrong- 
doing of  others. 

Another  matter  that  needs  to  be  mentioned 
in  this  connection  is  that  we  should  not  wait  for 
methods  to  develop  in  our  special  field  when 
there  are  very  successful  examples  of  methods 
in  other  fields  of  social  service  in  the  com- 
munity that  might  well  be  adopted  by  us.  I  once 
saw  a  woman  do  great  execution  on  a  crop  of 
weeds  with  a  corn-chopper,  and  split  kindling 
wood  efficiently  with  a  meat  cleaver,  because 
they  were  the  only  tools  she  had  in  reach.  So 
many  a  man  in  religious  social  service  in  the 
specific  fields  of  church  work  could  well  adopt 
and  adapt  methods  used  by  societies  and  indi- 
viduals engaged  in  social  activities  under  au- 
spices wholly  outside  the  church  organization 
as  such.  I  am  reminded  of  a  story  I  once  heard 
of  two  preachers  walking  in  Billingsgate  Fish 
Market,  and  upon  hearing  a  woman  strenuously 


148  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEEK 

abusing  a  customer  for  his  attempt  to  cheat  her 
out  of  a  sixpence,  one  of  these  preachers  said 
to  the  other,  * '  Let  us  get  out  of  hearing  of  this 
brawling  woman,"  but  the  other  said,  ''Not  yet; 
she  is  teaching  me  how  to  preach. ' '  So  many  a 
man  to-day  who  is  insisting  upon  some  one  tell- 
ing him  how  to  do  it,  could  well  afford  to  study 
some  of  the  methods  of  the  socialized  church  in 
his  city,  of  the  organized  charity  association,  of 
the  head  worker  of  some  successful  social  set- 
tlement, of  the  Salvation  Army,  of  the  Young 
Men's  Christian  Association,  or  of  the  Welfare 
Committee  of  the  National  Civic  Federation 
that  may  be  installing  sanitary  measures  in  a 
shop  within  walking  distance  of  his  dwelling. 

But,  on  the  other  hand,  I  can  sympathize  with 
the  man  who  asks,  ^'Hoivf^^  for  he  may  know 
the  field  himself  and  the  methods  and  machinery 
necessary,  but  find  that  the  laborers  available 
for  the  task  are  few — I  mean  men  and  women 
of  social  efficiency  who  have  a  socialized  con- 
sciousness with  respect  to  the  tasks  set  before 
the  Church  and  Sunday  school,  as  well  as  train- 
ing in  social  engineering  that  counts  for  some- 
thing. The  study  of  the  field,  as  well  as  work 
in  the  field,  is  necessary. 

The  Specific  Fields  of  Social  Service 

It  may  be  of  advantage  to  the  reader  for  me 
to  enumerate  some  of  the  specific  fields  of  so- 


HOW  TO  WORK  149 

cial  work  at  this  time,  including  the  special 
fields  of  charity  and  philanthropy  dealing  with 
the  dependent,  defective,  and  delinquent  social 
classes,  involving  questions  of  pauperism  (un- 
fortunate and  willfully  poor),  of  mental  and 
physical  incapacity,  of  adult  and  juvenile  way- 
wardness and  crime,  and  the  causes  and  cure; 
also  the  fields  of  preventive  philanthropy,  in- 
volving the  prevention  of  social  diseases,  such 
as  tuberculosis  and  those  that  grow  out  of  the 
social  evil  and  lack  of  proper  sanitation — prob- 
lems of  social  sinning  and  social  salvation.  It 
also  includes  the  question  of  the  Church  and  the 
laboring  man;  the  meaning  of  socialism,  the 
questions  of  population  movement,  and  those 
growing  out  of  population  increase,  birth  rates 
and  death  rates,  civic  virtue,  lawlessness  and 
mob  violence,  the  integrity  of  the  monogamous 
family,  and  many  other  like  questions  that  have 
to  do  with  the  practical  everyday  life  of  the 
modern  community,  especially  in  the  larger 
cities.  To  merely  enumerate  these  fields  for  so- 
cial work  shows  the  necessity  for  a  study  of 
them  before  we  attempt  to  do  very  efficient  work 
in  them. 

The  Study  of  the  Fields 

It  should  be  observed  at  the  outset  that  all 
of  these  problems  grow  out  of  the  greater 
problem  of  human  population  in  general,  and 


150  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

that  they  are  but  a  part  of  the  greater  problem 
of  the  struggle  for  existence  and  the  survival 
of  the  fittest.  They  form  but  a  part  of  the  study 
of  social  classification  and  differentiation  which 
we  have  treated  in  a  previous  chapter.  Our 
study  here  is  also  related  vitally  to  the  problem 
of  moral  relations  and  responsibilities.  The 
social  engineer  must  study  his  field  to  determine 
(1)  where  individual  responsibility  for  condi- 
tions lies;  (2)  where  family  responsibility  rests 
for  the  conditions  of  offspring  and  parentage ; 
(3)  what  constitutes  community  responsibility 
for  the  conditions  of  members  of  the  group,  for 
their  chances  to  make  a  living,  and  for  the  temp- 
tations that  may  beset  them  in  the  social  cus- 
toms allowed  by  the  community;  (4)  State  and 
national  responsibility  for  the  condition  of  the 
individual  citizen  in  so  far  as  he  is  a  victim  of 
State  or  national  policy.  In  fact,  one  of  the 
burning  questions  of  our  day  is  that  of  social 
morality. 

"What  furnishes  the  motive  for  our  study? 
The  conditions  of  human  beings  as  they  exist  in 
the  present  order  of  things :  the  pauper,  the  in- 
sane, the  feeble-minded,  the  deformed,  defective 
unfortunates,  the  vagrant,  the  criminal,  and  the 
delinquent  of  every  grade,  from  the  little  boy 
before  the  juvenile  court  to  the  hardened  high- 
wajTuan  before  the  judge  for  sentence  to  death, 
or  to  life  imprisonment,  not  only  crowding  our 


HOW  TO  WORK  151 

institutions,  but  many  of  them  still  uncared  for 
in  any  adequate  way  in  the  rush  and  hurry  of 
modern  community  life.  It  includes  also  the 
vast  multitudes  of  those  members  of  society 
who  from  various  causes  are  on  the  verge  of 
need  or  poverty  and  must  receive  help  at  the 
hands  of  charity  or  starve ;  the  hosts  of  the  un- 
fortunate who  must  be  healed,  or  cared  for  by 
charity  or  perish,  and  also  the  increasing  num- 
bers of  those  who  live  by  exploiting  the  accu- 
mulated earnings  and  capital  of  others  and  dis- 
regard all  restraints  of  law  and  right  living. 
It  includes  also  the  teeming  multitudes  of  the 
normal  members  of  the  community  that  may  be 
kept  out  of  the  defective,  dependent,  and  de- 
linquent social  classes  if  we  are  wise  enough  in 
our  day  to  do  for  them  the  things  that  will  keep 
their  energies  directed  in  proper  channels  of 
productive  activity.  No  man  can  study  the  life 
of  the  modern  workingman  in  many  of  our 
populated  centers  without  having  aroused  in 
him  a  tremendous  motive  for  helping  to  make 
his  condition  otherwise;  and  when  we  really 
come  to  know  the  possibilities  for  good  to  the 
whole  community  and  to  the  State  in  well- 
directed  organized  labor  and  organized  capital, 
we  will  wonder  why,  for  so  long,  we  have  in  our 
reli^ous  activities  failed  to  interest  ourselves 
in  these  modern  movements. 

The  study  of  the  fields  ot  social  service  also 


152  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

involves  methods  of  treatment  of  these  great 
classes  of  population:  methods  by  private  and 
public  charity,  and  charity  organization  socie- 
ties that  place  the  emphasis  upon  knowing  why 
relief  is  asked,  and  how  it  came  to  be  needed; 
and  the  study  of  institutional  and  associational 
treatment  of  these  classes ;  not  only  the  methods 
of  treatment  in  the  institutions  themselves,  and 
the  maintenance  of  them,  but  also  the  methods 
of  getting  the  individual  into  one  of  these  in- 
stitutions. To  illustrate :  I  lived  in  a  town  some 
years  ago  where  a  member  of  the  community 
had  a  defective  child  which  was  a  great  burden 
to  the  mother,  a  constant  expense  to  the  bread- 
winner for  extra  help  and  doctor's  bills  incident 
to  the  case.  Only  twenty  miles  distant,  less 
than  an  hour  by  rail,  was  an  institution  for  the 
care  of  just  such  cases.  A  friend  who  had  a 
knowledge  of  the  institution,  and  how  to  get  the 
boy  into  it,  so  relieved  that  home  that  the 
mother  was  soon  restored  to  her  normal  health, 
the  father  freed  from  a  great  burden,  and,  what 
is  best  of  all,  the  boy,  under  scientific  treat- 
ment and  Christian  care,  is  now  developed  into 
a  healthy,  promising  young  fellow,  when  if  left 
at  home  no  such  results  could  have  been 
achieved. 

It  includes  the  study  of  institutions  for  refor- 
mation, correction,  and  punishment,  the  treat- 
ment of  the  delinquent  in  a  civilized,  scientific 


HOW  TO  WORK  153 

way,  as  is  being  done  in  many  of  the  juvenile 
courts  and  probation  systems  of  our  progres- 
sive cities;  a  study  of  crime  as  a  disease,  the 
result  of  maladjustment  and  bad  economic  and 
social  surroundings,  and  often  inherited,  in 
tendency  at  least,  in  the  very  physical  structure. 
Our  tasks  include  also  the  study  of  the  causes 
of  the  conditions  we  have  to  meet,  especially 
those  that  we  classify  as  preventable  ills  in  so- 
ciety, the  causes  of  which  are  preventable ;  and 
they  include  also  the  classification  of  these 
causes — whether  physical,  psychical,  moral,  or 
social.  We  can  see  the  value  of  this  method, 
for  after  preventable  causes  are  known  our 
social  tasks  are  simplified — reduced  to  the  work 
of  removing  them.  For  example,  when  it  was 
discovered  that  the  cause  of  typhoid  fever  in 
one  of  our  great  cities  in  recent  years  was  the 
condition  of  the  water  supply,  the  work  of  pre- 
venting the  scourge  was  one  of  purifying  the 
water  by  building  a  filter-plant  and  by  con- 
trolling the  water-shed.  "When  we  discovered 
certain  ills  resulting  from  impure  food  and 
drugs,  we  passed  the  pure-food  act,  that  pro- 
vided for  the  inspection  and  labeling  of  these 
commodities  for  the  protection  of  the  public. 
When  we  discover  the  high  infant  death  rate 
is  caused  by  impure  milk,  our  social  task  is  sim- 
plified into  pouring  such  milk  into  the  gutter 
after  proper  inspection. 


154  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

Our  study  leads  us  further  into  the  problems 
of  the  elimination  of  the  things  that  are  doing 
mischief  in  the  community.  This  often  requires 
the  discovery  of  new  methods  by  experiment 
and  deduction.  It  may  mean  at  times  some- 
thing quite  radical,  and  at  times,  in  the  minds 
of  the  unthinking  contemporaries,  something 
rather  ''unorthodox,"  to  use  a  much-abused 
and  misused  word.  We  will  discover  that  some 
of  these  are  world-tasks,  or  national  problems, 
the  solution  of  which  we  can  never  reach  with- 
out the  sympathetic  cooperation  of  all  civilized 
and  enlightened  peoples. 

Our  study  and  work  also  arouse  the  sympa- 
thetic and  altruistic  impulses  of  the  human  soul. 
This  enables  every  man  to  see  in  his  fellow  man, 
no  matter  how  low  in  the  scale  of  life,  and  no 
matter  how  his  visage  may  be  marred  by  strug- 
gle, sin,  and  vice,  an  image  of  which  he  himself 
is  potentially  a  likeness.  Goethe  was  not  far 
from  the  truth  when  he  said,  '*I  can  think  of 
no  crime  in  the  conduct  of  another  which  I  my- 
self am  not  capable  of  committing. ' '  We  would 
rather  put  it  as  an  old  saint  in  a  Methodist  class- 
meeting  once  stated  it  when  he  saw  a  man  be- 
sotted with  drink:  ''But  for  the  grace  of  God, 
there  goes  me. "  It  will  result  in  the  creation  of 
that  charity  that  never  faileth,  but  endureth  all 
things,  believeth  all  things,  that  suffers  long 
and  is  kind.    It  will  develop  a  faith  that  is  opti- 


HOW  TO  WOKK  155 

mistic  and  enables  one  to  endure  as  seeing  the 
invisible ;  a  faith  in  the  integrity  of  human  na- 
ture as  strong,  at  least,  as  that  we  have  in 
plants  and  animal  forms,  that  it  will  respond 
to  correction  and  culture,  and  ultimately  take 
on  the  highest  forms  of  expression  of  which  it 
is  capable,  and  produce  moral  fruitage  com- 
mensurate with  the  husbandry  and  culture  ex- 
pended upon  it.  It  will  lead  us  ultimately  to  a 
rational  system  of  ' '  eugenics ' ' — a  modern  term 
used  to  represent  the  physical  culture  and  bet- 
terment of  the  human  species,  the  application  to 
human  kind  of  the  principles  and  laws  dis- 
covered in  biology  and  made  practicable  in 
animal  and  plant  culture. 

Of  course  we  may  not  hope  to  see  such 
methods  applied  in  a  positive  way  by  society  to 
the  human  species,  but  we  can  already  apply 
those  laws  and  principles  of  a  negative  and 
environmental  character  that  give  promise  of 
successful  results.  This  may  be  illustrated  by 
the  successful  management  of  the  "placing-out 
system"  of  some  of  our  orphanages  in  the 
State  of  New  York,  under  the  supervision  and 
control  of  the  efficient  State  Board  of  Charities. 
It  is  my  conviction  that  if  our  Bible  classes  in 
our  Sunday  schools,  our  brotherhoods  with 
their  splendid  organization  and  equipment  in 
men,  and  the  other  societies  of  the  Church  that 
could  spare  a  group  or  two  for  this  work,  should 


156  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

take  up  a  serious  study  of  the  specific  fields  of 
social  service  in  their  respective  communities, 
as  well  as  relate  themselves  to  the  bigger  social 
tasks,  we  would  not  be  troubled  long  with  the 
question  so  often  raised  by  church  workers  in 
our  day — ''How  are  we  to  do  it?"  We  would 
become  so  enthusiastic  over  the  approaching 
harvest  that  we  would  go  into  these  fields  with 
the  methods  and  machinery  already  at  hand, 
and  which  we  are  improving  as  we  use  them, 
and  reap  an  abundant  harvest  for  the  kingdom 
of  God. 


CHAPTER  XIV 

SOCIALIZED  CHARITY 

There  is  no  subject  of  interest  to  the  philan- 
thropic activities  of  the  modern  church  that 
did  not  have  an  important  place  in  the  thought, 
and  activity,  and  program  of  Jesus  and  his  dis- 
ciples. The  poor  that  enlisted  his  sympathy, 
the  afflicted  whom  he  touched  and  healed  in 
spite  of  ceremonial  protests  from  the  unen- 
lightened champions  of  tradition,  and  the  sin- 
ning who  met  the  threatenings  of  the  law  but 
were  set  right  and  forgiven  by  his  kindly  word 
of  divine  authority,  are  all  with  us  still,  and 
together  present  one  of  the  hardest  tasks  of 
modern  society  and  one  of  the  most  difficult  sub- 
jects of  our  church  work. 

It  is  a  matter  of  interest  to  know  something 
about  the  vast  numbers  of  these  three  classes 
in  society,  and  of  the  institutions  that  have  been 
established  and  the  societies  organized  to  care 
for  these  victims  of  circumstance  and  misfor- 
tune, of  social  maladjustment  and  of  economic 
blundering;  and  also  of  willful  digression  from 
the  rightful  ways  of  good  citizenship.  It  is  also 
important  that  we  should  know  how  these  in- 
stitutions are  controlled  and  managed  and  sup- 

157 


158  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEEE 

ported  by  the  State,  the  municipality,  or  by 
voluntary  gifts  and  bequests,  and  also  how  the 
specific  individuals  of  these  three  classes  in  any 
local  community  may  be  gotten  into  the  appro- 
priate institution  for  care,  treatment,  or  correc- 
tion and  reformation.  But  besides  all  these 
matters  of  interest  that  we  should  know  as 
teachers  and  students  of  moral  and  religious 
truth,  we  should  also  know  something  of  the 
causes  that  produce  these  great  classes  in  mod- 
ern civilization. 

We  are  apt  to  emphasize  the  causes  that  are 
personal  and  that  lie  within  the  narrow  range 
of  the  victims  themselves,  when,  as  a  matter  of 
fact,  the  causes  are  more  frequently  found  to  be 
in  the  environment  or  in  heredity,  over  which 
the  greater  number  of  these  persons  have  no 
control  whatsoever;  for  example,  the  blind,  the 
idiotic,  the  feeble-minded,  the  epileptic,  the  in- 
sane, the  deaf  and  dumb,  the  congenitally  de- 
formed and  crippled,  etc.  In  the  case  of  pov- 
erty many  of  these  pitiable  creatures  are  but 
the  victims  of  accidents  in  industry,  where  the 
breadwinner  has  been  killed,  maimed,  or  other- 
wise disabled  for  life;  or  they  are  the  victims 
of  inadequate  support  by  profligate  parents, 
who  have  spent  their  meager  earnings  in  drink 
or  wasted  them  in  other  forms  of  riotous  living. 
In  many  other  cases  poverty  is  due  to  the  un- 
thinking overcrowding  of  the  labor  market,  the 


SOCIALIZED  CHARITY  159 

resultant  low  wages  and  low  standards  of  liv- 
ing which  permit  the  working  people  to  store 
up  little  against  the  day  of  adversity  they  are 
likely  to  meet. 

In  the  case  of  the  multitudes  of  juvenile  de- 
linquents the  causes  lie  in  the  laws  themselves, 
which,  while  prohibiting  certain  things,  yet 
make  no  provision  for  the  lawful  exercise  of 
youthful  energies.  Many  a  boy  has  been 
brought  before  the  juvenile  court  for  some 
misdemeanor  which  would  never  have  been 
committed  had  the  city  provided  a  municipal 
playground,  or  a  bathing  pier,  or  some  facilities 
for  useful  sports.  Phillips  Brooks  was  right 
when  he  said  before  the  great  prison  congress 
held  in  Boston  some  years  ago,  that  a  man  was 
a  criminal  not  so  much  from  the  fact  of  what 
he  had  acquired,  but,  rather,  from  the  view- 
point of  what  he  had  missed;  not  that  he  was 
really  a  criminal,  but  that  he  was  not  fully  a 
man.  So  it  seems  to  me,  with  our  modern  in- 
sight into  the  causes  of  poverty,  defectiveness, 
and  badness,  we  ought  to  put  supreme  emphasis 
upon  supplying  our  young  people,  through 
channels  of  social  service  in  the  Sunday  school 
and  other  organizations  of  the  Church,  with  the 
things  they  need  to  keep  them  from  slipping 
into  these  misfortunes;  and  we  should  go  still 
further  and  bear  our  share  of  the  expense,  with 
modern  charity  and  philanthropy,  in  providing 


160  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEEE 

those  who  are  already  victims  with  the  things 
they  have  missed. 

If  our  moral  teaching  is  going  to  really 
amount  to  anything  in  the  lives  of  our  young 
people,  it  certainly  should  include  the  facts 
concerning  causes  that  are  known  and  remedies 
that  are  not  only  good  as  temporary  measures 
of  relief  but  are  also  fundamental  to  the  elimi- 
nation of  preventable  causes. 

What  Concerning  the  Poor? 

The  question  may  arise  in  the  minds  of 
some,  Wliat  can  we  teach  in  the  schools  con- 
cerning poverty,  its  causes  and  cure?  I  do  not 
claim  that  we  know  all  the  causes,  nor  that 
we  are  ready  to  recommend  all  the  remedies 
needed,  but  I  do  claim  that  we  know  some  very 
definite  things  as  to  causes,  and  some  very 
definite  things  as  to  remedies  which  we  ought 
to  teach  now,  and  give  our  scholars  the  benefit 
of  what  we  may  term  our  doubtful  proposals 
after  we  have  gotten  more  light. 

In  the  first  place,  we  know  that  much  of 
poverty  is  caused  by  accidents  in  industry  to 
breadwinners  for  which  there  is  paid  no  ade- 
quate compensation  either  to  the  victim  or  his 
dependent  wife  and  children  or  other  depend- 
ents upon  his  wages.  Now,  it  is  only  a  matter 
of  common  business  sense  for  us  as  Christian 
teachers  to  ally  ourselves  with  those  employers 


SOCIALIZED  CHARITY  161 

of  labor,  and  with  those  who  lead  the  thought 
of  organized  workers,  and  with  public  men 
everywhere  interested  in  social  welfare  in  their 
endeavors  to  formulate  and  enact  such  meas- 
ures of  compensation,  through  industrial  in- 
surance, old-age  pensions  for  those  worn  out 
in  the  service,  or  any  other  just  measure,  so 
that  the  victims  of  accidents,  disease,  and  old 
age  may  be  adequately  provided  for.  It  is 
worth  while  to  note  just  here  that  every  civi- 
lized country  in  the  world  has  already  some 
form  of  compensation  through  legislation  ex- 
cept the  United  States.  Of  course  it  should  also 
be  said  that  some  of  the  States,  like  Massachu- 
setts, New  York,  Wisconsin,  and  Minnesota,  are 
making  progress  in  this  direction,  while  other 
States  have  enacted  employers'  liability  legis- 
lation, which,  however,  has  not  proven  satis- 
factory either  to  the  workers  or  the  employers, 
because  of  the  litigation  which  is  usually  in- 
volved, extending  often  over  a  period  of  years, 
and  leaving  little  compensation  to  the  victim 
after  the  expenses  of  such  litigation  are  paid. 

We  know  also  that  much  of  poverty  is  caused 
by  the  curse  of  the  liquor  traffic,  through  the 
saloon,  where  often  the  workinginan  goes  to 
meet  with  his  union,  or  work-fellows,  and 
spends  the  greater  part  of  his  earnings.  It  is 
a  very  significant  fact  that  the  great  leaders  of 
organized  labor  in  this  country  and  in  Canada 


162  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEEK 

have  come  out  squarely  against  the  saloon,  if 
the  reports  of  the  great  Toronto  convention 
held  in  November,  1909,  are  correct. 

Mr.  Samuel  Gompers,  president  of  the  Amer- 
ican Federation  of  Labor,  declared  as  follows : 
''The  time  has  come  when  the  saloon  and  the 
labor  movement  must  be  divorced."  Mr.  John 
Mitchell,  formerly  president  of  the  United  Mine 
Workers  of  America,  is  quoted  as  saying  thus : 
"Poverty  has  driven  many  a  strong  man  to 
drink,  and  drink  has  driven  many  a  strong  man 
to  poverty.  I  am  not  at  all  impressed  with  the 
argument  that  if  you  close  down  the  liquor 
traffic  you  bring  about  a  calamity.  Eather  the 
contrary.  There  is  a  readjustment  of  society. 
Nothing  has  done  more  to  bring  misery  upon 
innocent  women  and  children  than  the  money 
spent  in  drink.  No  man  has  a  right  to  spend 
a  cent  upon  himself  until  he  has  first  provided 
for  his  family  all  the  comforts  they  deserve. 
He  has  no  money  to  spend  on  drink  without 
robbing  his  family.  I  believe  as  the  labor  move- 
ment grows  so  will  the  temperance  movement 
grow."  Mr.  Thomas  L.  Lewis,  president  of 
the  United  Mine  Workers  of  America,  is  also 
quoted  as  saying:  ''If  you  want  to  know  where 
the  miners  of  America  stand  on  the  temperance 
question,  I'll  tell  you.  In  our  constitution  we 
have  a  clause  which  forbids  any  member  to  sell 
intoxicants  even  at  a  picnic.     That's  what  we 


SOCIALIZED  CHAMTY  163 

think  of  the  liquor  traffic.  .  .  .  Because  the  liquor 
traffic  tends  to  enslave  the  people,  to  make  them 
satisfied  with  improper  conditions,  to  keep  them 
ignorant,  the  leaders  of  the  trade  union  are 
called  on  to  fight  the  saloon."^ 

Golden  words  these!  and  they  should  be 
widely  circulated  by  the  public  press,  pulpit, 
and  platform,  and  reechoed  in  all  our  schools, 
because  they  give  to  the  labor  movement  in  this 
country  and  its  great  leaders  a  viewpoint  of 
the  possibilities  for  moral  uplift  to  the  nation 
that  has  been  too  little  held  by  the  Church  and 
the  public  at  large  with  respect  to  them.  We 
should,  therefore,  join  forces  with  organized 
labor  and  all  other  reform  agencies  in  the  move- 
ment to  destroy  this  great  cause  of  poverty,  the 
saloon. 

We  know  also  that  another  prolific  cause  of 
pauperism  is  the  unthinking  public,  which  doles 
out  charity  to  every  ''hobo"  at  the  back  door, 
or  to  every  intruder  on  the  poor  fund  in  the 
churches,  without  adequate  information  as  to 
the  worthiness  of  the  case,  while  there  may  be 
a  very  efficient  charity  organization  society 
within  the  city  that  could  handle  these  cases 
with  efficiency  and  prevent  the  spread  of  the 
very  thing  the  public  are  blindly  hoping  to  cure. 
We  should,  therefore,  teach  our  young  people 

1  See  Literary  Digest,  December  18,  1909,  quoting  Western 
Christian  Advocate. 


164  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

the  modern  methods  of  organized  charity  and 
enlist  them  to  cooperate  with  all  such  organiza- 
tions as  are  seriously  seeking  in  an  intelligent, 
scientific,  and  yet  sympathetic  way  to  perma- 
nently relieve  society  of  this  perpetual  burden.^ 

What  CoNCERisriNG  the  Afflicted? 

We  can  conceive  of  some  people  deliberately 
choosing  a  life  of  poverty  when  they  discover 
how  easy  it  is  to  impose  on  the  sympathetic  who 
are  able  to  give  and  are  willing  to  do  so  with- 
out too  many  embarrassing  questions  to  the 
beggar ;  but  no  one  would  be  thought,  or  accused, 
of  deliberately  choosing  any  form  of  affliction 
for  the  sake  of  imposing  upon  the  public.  There 
are,  of  course,  some  cases  on  record  where  per- 
sons have  voluntarily  inflicted  wounds  for  the 
sake  of  effect,  but  even  in  such  cases  a  feeble 
mind  or  mental  unbalance  is  usually  the  con- 
tributory cause.  There  are  causes  well  known 
that  can  be  prevented,  and  hence  the  obligation 
rests  upon  us  to  help  educate  people  so  that 
they  will  help  to  prevent  them. 

We  have  already  mentioned  the  frequent 
cause  of  total  blindness  by  infection  in  infancy 


'  I  desire  to  recommend  to  those  teachers  in  the  Sunday  schools 
who  wish  to  study  the  conditions  and  causes  of  poverty  the  reading 
of  two  books  by  experts  in  this  field:  "Misery  and  Its  Causes,"  by 
Dr.  Edward  T.  Devine,  New  York;  and  "Standards  of  Living," 
by  Professor  Chapin,  of  Beloit,  Wisconsin,  published  by  the  Russell 
Sage  Foundation,  New  York. 


SOCIALISED  CHARITY  165 

that  may  easily  be  avoided.  In  those  cases 
where  the  remedy  is  known  it  is  only  a  matter 
of  giving  that  intelligence  to  the  public,  and 
especially  to  the  ignorantly  careless,  so  that  the 
proper  medical  treatment  may  be  applied  at 
the  right  time;  and,  furthermore,  we  should 
encourage  by  our  cooperation  those  fighting 
against  the  social  disease  that  makes  such  a 
misfortune  to  the  innocent  possible.  Where  is 
there  a  better  chance  to  impart  this  saving 
knowledge  to  the  multitudes  than  in  the  whole- 
some moral  atmosphere  of  the  Sunday  school 
class  of  young  men  or  women  soon  to  meet  the 
responsibilities  of  home  life  in  society? 

Those  forms  of  defectiveness  that  are  di- 
rectly due  to  heredity  must  be  prevented  by  wise 
social  laws  prohibiting  the  marriage  of  the  unfit 
among  themselves  or  with  normal  stock,  so  that 
such  cases  will  be  reduced  to  a  minimum.  This 
would  include  the  insane,  the  idiotic,  the  epi- 
leptic, the  inebriate,  and  those  afflicted  with 
certain  diseases.  Those  which  are  the  result  of 
accidents,  nervous  strain,  and  mental  anguish, 
must  be  met  by  wise  measures  of  prevention  in 
safety  devices  and  safeguards  in  industry  and 
in  modes  of  travel  and  by  a  change  in  environ- 
ment or  occupation,  and  by  the  kindly  service  of 
human  sjTupathy  and  the  healing  touch  of  the 
divine  hand.  The  people  have  established  in 
every  State  the  proper  institutions  to  care  for 


166  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEEE 

the  afl^cted,  and  it  is  our  duty  as  teachers  to 
know  something  of  these  institutions  and  their 
methods  of  treatment,  and  to  be  able  to  direct 
to  them  those  that  need  their  shelter  and  care. 

What  Concerning  the  Bad? 

Here  we  have  especially  to  do  with  a  class  of 
boys  and  young  men  (girls  are  sometimes  in- 
cluded) called  by  some  *' delinquents "  for  the 
sake  of  euphony,  but  ordinarily  we  speak  of 
them  as  ''bad"  boys,  or  '' rascals."  They  com- 
prise those  members  of  society  who  are  incipient 
criminals  and  yet  are  not  bad  enough  to  be 
classed  as  such,  and  under  no  circumstances  are 
to  be  treated  as  criminals.  They  may  be  more 
definitely  designated  as  those  who  are  brought 
before  the  juvenile  courts  of  our  cities  and 
placed  under  the  care  of  probation  officers,  or 
are  sent  to  reformatories  or  other  institutions 
for  correction. 

The  causes  of  delinquencies  among  boys  are 
discovered  to  be  chiefly  in  what  they  have 
missed  rather  than  in  what  they  have  acquired, 
though  the  latter  is  often  a  contributory  cause; 
for  example,  the  lack  of  proper  educational 
methods  for  boys  of  surplus  energies,  who  tire 
of  books  easily,  but  might  be  held  to  useful  edu- 
cational tasks  by  the  use  of  manual  training, 
proper  athletic  sports,  and  well-directed  field 
trips  to  study  facts  at  first  hand  in  nature,  in 


SOCIALIZED  CHAEITY  167 

shops,  in  stores,  and  other  places  where  the 
world's  work  is  being  carried  on.  Happily,  in 
many  quarters  this  is  already  being  done.  A 
frequent  cause  of  delinquency  among  young 
men  is  the  lack  of  occupation,  due  to  having 
learned  no  trade.  In  reading  the  annual  report 
of  the  Elmira  Eeformatory  in  New  York  State 
some  years  ago  I  learned  that  over  sixty  per 
cent  of  the  inmates  were  registered  as  without 
an  occupation.  We  should,  therefore,  insist 
upon  every  young  man  learning  a  trade,  or  some 
useful  profession,  for  his  own  protection  as  well 
as  for  the  good  of  the  State.  We  know  that  in 
many  districts  of  our  crowded  centers  of  popu- 
lation the  numbers  of  cases  before  the  juvenile 
courts  have  been  almost  eliminated  by  the  open- 
ing of  a  public  playground  in  the  neighborhood, 
or  a  public  bath,  or  a  roof  garden,  or  basement 
gymnasium  in  the  school  building,  or  in  the  so- 
cialized church  house  in  the  community. 

It  is,  therefore,  a  matter  of  good  business 
for  us  to  advocate  the  establishment  of  these 
useful  agencies  at  public  expense,  which  will  be 
well  paid  for  by  the  saving  in  cost  of  punitive 
and  correctional  institutions  and  also  in  the 
making  of  good  citizens.  Another  frequent 
cause  of  badness  in  boys  is  the  habit  of  stealing 
junk  from  the  railroads  passing  through  the 
town  and  shifting  cars  on  sidings,  also  of  steal- 
ing coal  and  other  commodities  from  cars,  and 


168  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

that  too  frequently  at  the  instigation  of  the  junk 
dealers  themselves,  or  of  unscrupulous  parents 
who  find  it  an  easy  way  to  get  on  in  the  world 
without  work.  In  such  eases  the  thing  to  ad- 
vocate is  the  punishment  of  the  guilty  junk 
dealers  and  the  imj^osing  of  proper  penalties 
upon  the  guilty  parents,  as  well  as  putting  on 
probation  the  delinquent  boys. 

Now,  why  can  we  not  join  forces  with  all 
good  people  who  are  like-minded  and  advocate 
the  same  treatment  for  the  saloon  keepers  who 
sell  intoxicants  to  boys,  or  the  proprietors  of 
dance  halls  and  picture  shows  who  corrupt 
young  boys  and  girls  by  their  indecent  exhibits  ? 
If  we  did  so,  we  could  succeed  in  removing  the 
most  prolific  causes  of  badness  among  the  boys 
and  girls  of  our  cities,  if  at  the  same  time  we 
provided  more  wholesome  and  happy  recreation 
for  them  under  Christian  auspices.^ 

In  dealing  with  all  these  classes  under  dis- 
cussion the  social  engineer  must  always  keep  in 
mind  the  fact  that  we  are  living  in  an  intricate 
network  of  social  causes  which  make  the  prob- 
lem of  ultimate  success  a  very  complex  one; 
but  this  fact  should  not  deter  us  from  doing 
what  we  know  we  can  and  ought  to  do  for  the 
welfare  of  the  poor,  the  afflicted,  and  the  bad. 

» I  would  recommend  here  the  reading  of  Chapters  VI  and  VII  of 
my  recent  book  on  "Social  Aspects  of  Religious  Institutions," 
Eaton  &  Mains,  New  York. 


CHAPTER  XV 

TEAM  WORK  FOR  THE  COMMUNITY 

In  doing  ordinary  team  work  the  question  is 
not  merely  how  to  secure  and  train  the  individ- 
ual men — for  we  must  always  use  such  as  we 
have — but  the  question  is,  rather,  how  to  get 
the  men  we  have  to  ivorh  together.  For  most 
churches  and  Sunday  schools  the  only  possible 
way  to  do  social  work  in  and  for  the  community 
is  simply  by  using  the  ordinary  men  and  women 
who  live  an  ordinary  workaday  life  in  that  same 
community.  We  cannot  hope  to  get  all  people 
to  think  alike,  or  to  agree  on  all  points  con- 
nected with  any  measure  for  the  moral  uplift 
of  the  community,  but  we  can  get  many  ordinary 
men  to  unite  in  some  very  extraordinary  move- 
ment for  the  social  betterment  of  the  entire 
community.  For  example,  the  success  of  the 
temperance  movement  in  this  country  in  dealing 
with  the  saloon  and  other  forms  of  vice  has  been 
almost  entirely  due  to  organized  efforts  of 
groups  of  very  ordinary  sincere  men  and  women 
of  our  church  communities. 

It  is  true  that  much  depends  upon  the  char- 
acter of  the  leadership  we  have  for  team  work, 
but,  after  all,  success  depends  ultimately  upon 

169 


170  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

the  cooperative  efforts  of  the  many  who  are  to 
be  classed  as  the  ordinary  people  that  make  up 
the  rank  and  file  of  our  communities.  In  the 
high  schools  and  colleges  we  are  accustomed  to 
team  ivork,  and  the  success  of  the  athletic  teams, 
debating  clubs,  and  other  groups  in  the  life  of 
the  school  depends  upon  several  things:  first, 
upon  the  personal  characteristics  of  the  young 
men  making  the  team ;  secondly,  upon  the  prac- 
tice or  training  in  team  play ;  and,  thirdly,  upon 
the  support  on  the  side  lines  from  the  rank  and 
file  of  their  comrades  in  the  school  or  college. 
And,  furthermore,  success  often  depends  upon 
the  enthusiasm  that  is  created  by  mass  meetings 
in  the  interest  of  some  special  game,  and  by 
the  "rooters"  during  the  critical  moments  of 
the  game.  So  in  carrying  on  team  work  by  the 
young  people  of  the  Sunday  school  and  other 
church  organizations,  it  is  a  matter  of  first  im- 
portance to  select  the  right  persons  to  do  team 
work,  and  they  should  be  given  a  chance  to 
practice  forms  of  social  service  in  the  com- 
munity that  will  prepare  them  for  the  supreme 
tasks  that  require  skill  and  persistent  effort. 
We  might  well  hold  a  mass  meeting  of  all  the 
school  or  congregation  to  stimulate  the  team 
in  their  work,  and  to  interest  the  many  in  their 
support  as  well. 

One  reason  why  we  do  not  find  enthusiasm 
in  our  social  work  in  many  quarters,  like  that 


TEAM  WOEK  FOR  THE  COMMUNITY      171 

we  find  in  college  athletics,  is  largely  due  to  the 
fact  that  we  do  not  take  our  work  seriously 
enough.  We  somehow  talk  in  a  general  way 
about  our  duties  in  the  community,  and  expect 
every  individual  to  start  a  little  movement  all 
by  himself  for  the  welfare  of  the  many,  when 
as  a  matter  of  common  experience  in  other  lines 
of  work  we  see  men  doing  things  successfully 
by  organizing  a  few  to  do  a  specific  task,  and  by 
giving  them  in  the  doing  of  it  the  support  of 
the  many.  Here  is  an  example  of  what  I  mean : 
I  know  a  church  in  a  large  city  where  they  have 
one  large  Bible  class  of  men  numbering  about 
one  hundred  and  twenty.  Now,  this  class  is  or- 
ganized, having  a  president,  several  vice-presi- 
dents, a  secretary,  and  a  treasurer.  Member- 
ship Committee,  etc.  But  so  far  as  I  know  from 
observing  its  work  as  thus  organized  for  several 
years,  it  made  no  use  of  these  one  hundred  and 
twenty  men  for  any  purpose  whatever  in  that 
large  city,  except  now  and  then  an  appeal  was 
made  for  their  support  as  individual  workers  in 
buttonholing  somebody  for  Rally  Day,  or  to  se- 
cure his  membership  in  the  class,  when,  to  my 
way  of  thinking,  several  teams  for  social  service 
in  the  community  could  have  been  developed  out 
of  that  body  of  strong  young  men.  What  was 
actually  done  in  the  case  referred  to  is  this :  the 
men  were  taught  the  Sunday  school  lessons 
in  a  very  interesting  way,  and  the  truths  they 


172  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

learned  were  all  useful  and  good,  but  they  were 
practically  of  little  value  because  the  men  were 
given  nothing  to  do  in  a  specific  way  to  develop 
moral  character.  The  result  was  that  every 
year  many  men  dropped  out  of  the  class,  and 
others  were  gathered  in,  and  so  from  the  mere 
view  of  the  class  as  conducted  it  was  a  success, 
but  from  the  viewpoint  of  work  accomplished 
for  that  community,  and  in  training  men  for 
team  work  in  social  service,  it  was  an  entire 
failure. 

How  TO  Proceed 

One  of  the  first  things  necessary  to  be  done 
in  getting  our  young  men  and  women  organized 
to  perform  deeds  of  a  social  character  in  a  com- 
munity is  to  show  them  impressively  the  social 
nature  of  conduct,  good  or  bad,  by  giving  them 
concrete  examples  of  actual  good  results  to  the 
community  of  any  specific  form  of  social  serv- 
ice. It  is  not  sufficient  for  us  to  have  in  mind 
simply  the  words  of  the  ritual  with  respect  to 
the  world,  the  flesh,  and  the  devil,  but  we  must 
be  led  to  see  the  concrete  examples  of  their  ac- 
tivities in  the  town  where  we  live  before  we 
are  likely  to  be  aroused  to  the  necessity  of  doing 
anything  for  our  neighbors,  either  in  an  indi- 
vidual way  or  in  group  organization  for  the 
real  improvement  of  the  community. 

1.  Team  ivork  against  tuberculosis.    A  group 


TEAM  WORK  FOE  THE  COMMUNITY      173 

of  young  men  and  women  might  be  chosen  from 
any  one  of  our  adult  Bible  classes  to  make  a 
study  of  the  social  character  of  this  disease  in 
so  far  as  the  community  is  concerned.  Such  a 
group  could  bring  to  the  attention  of  the  entire 
church  community  the  facts  so  well  known  with 
reference  to  the  character  and  treatment  of  this 
greatest  of  all  plagues  known  to  men,  if  we  are 
to  judge  from  the  annual  death  rate  from  this 
cause.  They  could  show  how  this  is  a  communi- 
cable disease,  and  how  it  is  a  prevetitable  dis- 
ease, and  also  how  in  many  cases  it  is  a  curable 
disease.  If  people  are  not  interested  in  city 
ordinances  prohibiting  spitting  in  public  con- 
veyances, or  upon  the  floors  of  public  buildings, 
or  upon  the  sidewalks,  such  a  group  could  dem- 
onstrate how  directly  the  bacilli  of  this  disease 
may  be  communicated  directly  to  the  child  play- 
ing upon  the  street,  or  to  the  home,  by  direct 
contact  with  sputmn  upon  shoes  or  skirts,  so 
that  the  child  playing  upon  the  carpet  in  the 
home  may  be  directly  inoculated.  Such  a  team 
could  do  preventive  work  by  demonstrating 
methods  of  fresh-air  treatment,  or  assisting  in- 
cipient cases  to  reach  the  sanitarium,  or  pre- 
ventorium, before  it  is  too  late  to  effect  a  cure. 
It  could  also  in  a  judicious  way  distribute  infor- 
mational literature,  and  paste  in  proper  places 
placards  giving  sane  caution  to  the  unthinking 
in  the  community  with  respect  to  prevention 


174  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

and  treatment  of  the  disease.  In  short,  such  a 
group  of  workers  could  do  ahnost  everything 
that  could  be  done  to  cooperate  with  the  modern 
movement  which  may  be  characterized  as  a  war 
against  this  form  of  disease.  Another  group  of 
well-chosen  men  and  women  could  do  a  similar 
work  in  preventing  other  social  diseases  in  so 
far  as  they  are  the  result  of  ignorance  or  cul- 
pable negligence,  and  also  to  help  all  good  citi- 
zens in  breaking  up  the  so-called  *' white-slave 
traffic,"  especially  in  our  large  cities,  but  also 
drawing  into  its  meshes  the  unsuspecting  inno- 
cents of  the  rural  districts,  or  the  inexperienced 
immigrants. 

2.  Team  work  for  public  health.  If  people  in 
the  community  have  no  interest  in  supporting 
proposed  municipal  legislation  for  a  bureau  of 
sanitation  and  public  health,  another  team 
should  be  organized  to  show  to  them  the  danger 
from  dirty  streets,  unsanitary  tenements,  im- 
pure milk  supply,  and  the  accompanying  high 
death  rate  among  infants  who  are  the  victims. 
They  could  secure  a  comparative  set  of  death 
rates  in  cities  where  such  inspection  is  made 
and  in  cities  where  it  is  not  made.  Also  photo- 
graphs and  charts  could  be  secured,  giving  a 
graphic  demonstration  of  the  actual  conditions 
which  exist  and  of  the  conditions  desired. 
Typhoid  fever  is  a  preventable  disease,  and 
may  be  called  a  disease  of  dirt,  and  yet  how 


TEAM  WORK  FOR  THE  COMMUNITY      175 

many  victims  there  are  each  year  from  this  dis- 
ease due  to  impure  water  supply!  And  how 
many  people  fail  to  know  the  relation  between 
carelessness  at  summer  resorts  with  reference 
to  sewage  disposal  near  the  water  supply  and 
this  dreadful  disease!  '\^^iat  more  Christlike 
service  could  any  group  of  young  folk  render  a 
community  than  making  known  to  people  other- 
wise intelligent  the  ways  of  avoiding  such  forms 
of  contagion  which  have  such  dire  social  con- 
sequences 1 

3.  Team  work  in  social-service  departments 
of  Jiospitals.  The  social  engineer  should  or- 
ganize in  every  church  a  group  of  young  people 
who  would  be  able  to  cooperate  with  the  phy- 
sicians in  treating  those  cases  in  the  hospitals 
which  need  social  treatment  as  well  as  medical. 
For  example,  a  case  is  under  treatment  in  the 
hospital.  It  is  a  mother  suffering  from  "nerv- 
ous dyspepsia,"  but  the  real  cause  of  her 
malady  is  a  wayward  son.  Now,  the  modern 
physician  knows  full  well  that  a  permanent  cure 
demands  the  rescue  of  that  son  to  a  normal 
moral  life,  so  he  calls  on  the  social-service  de- 
partment of  the  hospital  to  take  up  that  phase 
of  the  effective  treatment  where  his  art  finds 
its  limitations.  So  for  a  thousand  and  one  vary- 
ing cases  that  have  a  more  remote  or  an  imme- 
diate social  factor  which  is  causal  to  the  chief 
difficulty.     Here  is  a  splendid  field  for   our 


176  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

strong  youug  men  and  women  to  do  a  Christian 
service  in  carrying  out  His  program  for  all  who 
suffer.  Such  a  group  would  find  many  oppor- 
tunities of  presenting  to  the  unfortunate  for  the 
first  time,  or  for  the  most  critical  time,  the  Great 
Physician  who  can  heal  the  soul  as  well  as 
the  body.  Other  cases  would  come  before  this 
group  of  social  workers  that  would  reveal  the 
close  relation  of  human  ills  to  some  of  the  eco- 
nomic problems  of  the  present.  Here  is  a  man 
being  treated  for  the  loss  of  his  right  hand,  or 
the  loss  of  a  leg,  or  for  some  other  injury  that 
will  incapacitate  him  as  the  breadwinner  for  a 
family  of  six  children  and  an  invalid  wife. 
Here  arises  the  question  of  compensation,  or  in- 
surance, in  the  case  of  accidents  in  industry; 
child  labor  may  be  also  involved,  and  the  stand- 
ards of  living. 

Such  a  group  could  secure  the  information 
that  would  make  the  entire  church  community 
more  intelligent  in  its  advocacy  of  social  re- 
forms and  would  lead  many  a  man  in  industry 
to  be  more  charitable  toward  his  employees.* 

4.  Team  work  against  juvenile  delinquency. 
In  the  previous  chapter  we  stated  that  many 
boys  were  delinquent  not  by  virtue  of  what  they 
had  acquired  but  by  virtue  of  what  they  had 


»  For  a  study  of  team  work  for  the  sick  in  hospitals,  read  "Social 
Service  and  the  Art  of  Healing,"  by  Cabat.  Compare  Knopp, 
"Tuberculosis  a  Preventable  and  Curable  Disease." 


TEAM  WOKK  FOR  THE  COMMUNITY      177 

missed,  and  we  showed  how  in  our  cities  there 
were  many  cases  of  delinquency  because  the 
boys  had  no  opportunities  provided  for  the 
gratification  of  normal  and  worthy  youthful 
desires.  Xow,  it  seems  to  me  that  we  could 
render  a  useful  service  to  the  community  if  we 
had  in  every  church  a  group  of  social  workers 
who  would  make  it  their  chief  aim  to  champion 
the  cause  of  this  large  class  of  boys  in  the  com- 
munity who  really  need  the  help  and  advice  of  a 
big  brother.  They  could  secure  for  the  boys  a 
place  to  play  ball  in  summer  or  a  place  to  skate 
in  winter  on  some  vacant  lot  in  a  depression 
easily  flooded  from  the  water  main  at  little  ex- 
pense; also  places  of  shelter  and  warmth,  as 
well  as  for  reading  and  recreation  in  winter 
for  the  newsboys,  and  those  without  proper 
amusement  at  home  in  the  tenements,  and  who 
would  be  otherwise  found  on  the  streets  or  in 
the  saloons  or  gambling  resorts  of  the  greater 
cities.  There  is  no  reason  why  certain  rooms 
in  the  public  school  building  should  not  be 
utilized  for  such  purposes  under  proper  man- 
agement at  little  or  no  extra  expense  save 
that  of  lighting,  which  would  be  a  small  item 
compared  with  the  good  accomplished  and  the 
expenses  of  prosecutions  in  the  juvenile  court. 

5.  Team  ivork  by  men  to  save  the  boys  from 
leaving  the  Sunday  school  and  Church  during 
the  first  years  of  adolescence.    I  do  not  think 


178  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

any  intelligent  worker  in  the  Sunday  school 
needs  to  be  told  that  a  great  many  of  the  boys 
who  were  in  the  Sunday  schools  of  the  city  until 
they  were  twelve  or  fourteen  are  now  entirely 
out  of  touch  with  the  Sunday  school  and  Church, 
especially  those  whose  parents  are  not  mem- 
bers of  the  Church.  It  seems  to  me  that  here 
is  one  of  the  most  fruitful  fields  of  social  serv- 
ice where  team  work  by  the  men  of  the  Bible 
classes  is  needed  most.  As  a  matter  of  observa- 
tion, and  of  recollection  of  my  own  boyhood, 
I  think  it  can  be  stated  as  an  axiom  that  boys 
from  fourteen  to  eighteen  like  to  he  ivith  men. 
Now,  I  am  not  sure  but  that  it  would  be  a  wise 
move  in  many  of  the  Sunday  schools  to  admit 
boys  to  men's  classes,  or  at  least  to  put  all  boys 
at  that  age  in  charge  of  men,  and  invite  other 
strong  young  men  to  join  these  classes  as  social 
workers.  In  any  case,  we  should  inaugurate 
some  such  movement  to  keep  the  boys  from  leav- 
ing the  school  when  they  need  the  Sunday  school 
most.  Here  is  a  field  of  work  that  demands  a 
special  type  of  social  engineer,  and  the  sooner 
we  get  men  into  training  in  every  community 
for  such  work  the  sooner  we  will  see  all  our 
Church  activities  better  proportioned  with  men. 
6.  Team  work  in  church  federation.  There 
might  well  be  another  group  in  every  church 
whose  chief  work  should  be  the  study  of  the 
problems  of  interdenominational  unity  and  fed- 


TEAM  WORK  FOE  THE  COMMUNITY      179 

eration  in  all  matters  pertaining  to  the  work 
of  tlie  kingdom  of  God.  This  group  should 
know  all  occasions  in  the  life  of  the  community, 
and  in  the  welfare  of  the  State  and  nation,  when 
it  is  possible  for  the  churches  to  stand  together 
and  to  work  together  for  the  same  end.  In  cases 
of  municipal  reform,  such  as  the  election  of  ex- 
cise commissioners  or  the  board  of  aldermen, 
who  have  in  charge  the  business  of  the  city  gov- 
ernment, it  should  be  made  impossible  for  a 
boodling  minority  to  control  in  the  councils  of 
the  parties  so  that  dishonest  men  should  even 
have  a  chance  of  election  by  being  nominated. 
So  in  all  matters  of  public  policy  there  should 
be  no  uncertainty  as  to  where  the  churches  of 
Christ  will  stand  on  any  measure  involving  the 
morals  of  the  nation. 

7.  Team  ivork  in  relating  the  Church  to  the 
industrial  problems  of  the  present.  In  many 
communities  there  should  be  groups  of  strong 
young  men  representing  the  employers  and  the 
employees  in  the  industrial  pursuits  of  the  peo- 
ple, so  that  everybody  may  be  able  to  judge  for 
himself  what  is  just  and  equal  in  any  dispute 
as  to  wages  and  hours  of  work,  as  well  as  the 
conditions  of  labor,  between  any  two  industrial 
groups.  This  subject  we  will  treat  more  at 
length  in  a  subsequent  chapter. 

All  this  involves  the  awakening  of  the  social 
consciousness  in  men  so  that  they  will  see  the 


180  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

importance  of  social  service  and  the  social 
significance  of  individual  group  effort  for  the 
welfare  of  the  community.  I  do  not  claim  that 
we  need  more  organizations  to  get  men  in  our 
churches  to  do  social  service,  but  we  need  more 
organization.  Some  will  say,  however,  that  all 
these  tasks  mentioned  above  for  team  work 
cannot  be  carried  on  by  the  Church.  I  admit 
this  is  true  in  many  churches  as  they  are  now 
managed,  but  my  point  is  this,  that  the  Church 
should  be  so  organized  and  conducted  that  these 
tasks  could  he  performed  by  it.  Unless  we  do 
this  kind  of  work  our  Bible  teaching  will  not  be 
a  living  message. 


CHAPTER  XVI 

THE  CITY  PROBLEM 

DuKiNG  tlie  last  quarter  of  the  nineteentli 
century  the  greater  currents  of  population 
movement  within  our  national  domain  were  to- 
ward the  cities,  so  that  we  have  as  a  result  what 
is  termed  the  congestion  of  population  with  all 
its  accompanying  ills — summed  up  in  that  one 
ugly  word  ''slum."  In  religious  work  many 
people  have  come  to  look  on  the  modern  city  as 
a  ''challenge"  to  Christian  civilization  and  look 
upon  the  city  as  a  menace  to  Christianity  it- 
self/ Some  even  go  so  far  as  to  say  that  were 
it  not  for  the  constant  recruits  from  the  rural 
districts  of  church  members  with  religious  fer- 
vor many  of  our  churches  would  lose  altogether 
that  element  of  Christian  efficiency  which  is 
based  upon  a  healthy  emotionalism  called  "re- 
ligious fervor."  But  we  find  also  in  modern 
times  a  counter  movement  from  the  cities  to  the 
suburbs,  resulting  in  that  ever-increasing  group 
of  sturdy  cultured  folk  known  as  the  "com- 
muters ' '  or  the  ' '  suburbanites. "  It  is  here  that 
we  find  some  of  our  most  successful  church  en- 
terprises to-day. 

1  Compare  "The  Challenge  of  the  City,"  by  Josiah  Strong. 
181 


182  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

But  when  we  come  to  study  more  closely  the 
character  of  this  new  type,  we  discover  that  it 
is  made  up  largely  of  those  who  in  former  years 
moved  from  the  country  to  the  city,  or  are  their 
direct  descendants,  and  we  also  learn  that  an- 
other class,  the  ''submerged  tenth"  of  the  orig- 
inal country  folk,  and  the  incoming  aliens  from 
other  shores,  or  natives  from  other  centers  of 
population,  make  up  the  congested  population 
groups  that  furnish  the  problem  we  have  here 
to  consider. 

The  City  Not  a  Menace 

In  the  first  place,  I  wish  to  state  that  the  city, 
unless  abused  by  commercialism,  is  not  a  men- 
ace to  civilization,  but  a  blessing.  The  fact  of 
the  city  in  modern  times  as  compared  with  the 
unstable  life  of  earlier  times,  when  few  great 
cities  were  built  and  when  the  majority  of  the 
population  lived  in  rural  communities,  is  a 
justification  for  its  existence  as  a  good  to  hu- 
manity, for  in  the  long  run  human  nature  will 
not  persist  in  the  pursuit  of  that  which  is  not 
ultimately  for  its  highest  good. 

What,  then,  is  there  about  the  modern  city 
that  presents  a  social  problem  of  such  magni- 
tude as  that  of  the  ''congestion  of  population"? 
1  believe  it  is  not  the  city  in  itself  but  the  abuse 
of  the  privilege  the  city  offers  that  is  the  real 
menace  to  Christian  civilization.    The  i)rivilege 


THE  CITY  PROBLEM  183 

of  being  in  the  crowd  leads  some  to  the  abuse  of 
exploiting  their  neighbor's  necessities  for  their 
own  gain  without  regard  to  the  restraints  of 
social  justice.  Consider  the  privilege  of  the 
presence  of  the  crowd  whose  appetites  and  pas- 
sions may  be  played  upon  for  blood  money  in 
the  traffic  of  vice!  So  we  witness  the  ''white- 
slave trade,"  the  brothel,  the  saloon,  the  dive, 
the  gambling  den,  and  their  distressed  victims. 
We  have  also,  as  a  result  of  the  abuse  of  the 
privilege  of  presence,  the  ''sweatshop"  or  the 
''sweating  system" — the  factory  employing 
women  and  children  at  a  very  low  wage;  we 
see  also  the  tenement  system,  the  lodging  house, 
the  soup-kitchen,  the  pushcart — all  seeking  gain 
from  the  privilege  of  presence.  In  fact,  we  are 
led  to  see  at  once  that  the  ills  to  society  from 
overcrowding  are  directly  due  to  a  very  worthy 
economic  motive,  but  that  this  motive  is  often 
misdirected.  Wliat  we  are  after  is  to  give  it  a 
true  function  and  a  true  motive. 

The  Fact  of  Congestion 

During  the  wonderful  Exhibit  of  Congestion 
of  Population  held  in  New  York  city  during  the 
month  of  March,  1908,  the  leading  facts  of 
congestion  were  very  graphically  presented  by 
models,  charts,  maps,  statistical  tables,  lectures, 
etc.  One  of  the  most  striking  and  impressive 
devices  was  that  of  an  arrangement  of  birdshot 


184  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEEK 

on  a  physiographic  model  map,  each  small  shot 
representing  a  person  in  the  crowded  condition 
of  Manhattan  Island,  so  that  in  some  of  the 
great  tenement  blocks  *^ downtown"  the  shot 
were  laid  nearly  an  inch  thick,  showing  how 
crowded  would  be  the  actual  population  if  all 
were  suddenly  compelled  to  seek  the  ground 
floor  in  case  of  fire,  or  other  serious  cause. 
Model  tenement  blocks  were  also  exhibited, 
showing  the  condition  of  tenement  life  before 
the  new  tenement  laws  for  improvement  in  con- 
struction went  into  effect,  and  also  those  repre- 
senting the  kind  now  required  by  law. 

A  description  of  Model  No.  1,  as  representing 
actual  conditions  January  1,  1900,  in  a  certain 
block  in  New  York  city,  will  be  of  interest  to  the 
reader,  and  will  impressively  illustrate  the 
problem.  This  block  then  included  thirty-nine 
tenement  houses,  containing  605  different  apart- 
ments, occupied  by  2,781  persons,  of  whom  2,315 
were  over  five  years  of  age,  and  469  under 
five  years  of  age.  It  contained  1,588  rooms, 
but  not  one  bath ;  only  40  apartments  were  sup- 
plied with  hot  water.  There  were  441  dark 
rooms  having  no  ventilation  to  the  outer  air, 
and  no  light  or  air  except  that  derived  from 
other  rooms,  and  635  rooms  getting  their  sole 
light  and  air  from  dark  and  narrow  air  shafts. 
During  five  years  there  were  reckoned  from  this 
block  alone  32  cases  of  tuberculosis,  and  during 


THE  CITY  PKOBLEM  185 

one  year  13  cases  of  diphtheria.  In  addition  to 
this  there  were  during  the  five  years  mentioned 
665  different  applications  for  charitable  relief 
from  the  inhabitants  of  this  block,  while  the 
gross  rentals  per  year  amounted  to  $113,964.^ 

In  contrast  to  this  was  exhibited  Model  3, 
called  the  *'New  Law"  tenement,  the  kind  now 
erected  under  the  law  of  1901.  This  model  has 
the  following  advantages:  There  are  no  dark 
rooms,  no  narrow  air  shafts.  These  tenements 
are  provided  with  courts  and  yards  large 
enough  to  give  sufficient  light  and  air  on  every 
floor,  and  each  apartment  is  provided  with  good 
individual  sanitary  accommodations  and  rea- 
sonable protection  from  fire. 

There  were  also  exhibited  in  life  size  the 
sweatshop  rooms  where  little  girls  sit  all  day, 
fifteen  in  one  small  room,  making  artificial 
flowers  for  two  cents  a  dozen. 

Another  model  showed  eight  persons  sleep- 
ing at  night  in  one  small  room  with  three  beds, 
some  of  these  persons  being  boarders. 

Another  striking  fact  of  congestion  was  a 
silhouette  entitled  ''From  School  Teacher  to 
Policeman" — showing  the  crowded  condition  of 
the  public  schools  which  made  it  necessary  to 
turn  away  some  of  the  children,  who,  left  to  play 
in  the  streets,  naturally  fell  into  the  hands  of 


1  These  statistics  are  taken  from  a  folder  printed  and  distributed 
at  the  time  of  the  exhibit. 


186  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

the  policeman  after  getting  into  mischief.  So 
much  for  the  fact  of  the  congestion  of  popula- 
tion in  our  large  cities. 

The  Results  of  Congestion 

It  is  well  for  us  to  ask  here,  What  are  some 
of  the  results  of  this  overcrowding  of  popula- 
tion in  these  tenement  districts  of  the  cities? 
One  of  the  most  striking  and  impressive  is  the 
increased  mortality  of  infants  in  these  crowded 
sections.  Another  result  is  the  ravages  of  tu- 
berculosis and  other  diseases  due  to  the  lack  of 
proper  sanitation,  absence  of  light  and  fresh 
air,  in  the  inner  dark  rooms  of  these  structures. 
Still  another  result  is  the  weakened  constitu- 
tions, dwarfed  physique,  due  to  bad  housing  and 
lack  of  wholesome  food.  This  has  been  proven 
by  the  actual  measurements  of  groups  of  school 
children  in  these  sections,  and  comparisons 
made  with  measurements  of  similar  groups 
under  more  favorable  conditions. 

The  increased  statistics  of  vice  and  crime 
may  be  directed  to  these  tenement  blocks,  these 
crimes  being  due  not  to  the  inherent  wickedness 
of  these  people,  but,  rather,  to  the  lack  of  the 
natural  uplift  they  should  have  received  in  a 
different  environment. 

Another  appalling  result  of  congestion  of 
population  is  the  ravages  of  that  class  of  dis- 
eases we  call  venereal,  which  are  the  result  of 


THE  CITY  PROBLEM  187 

the  vice  of  unlawful  sex-relationship.  At  a 
dinner  given  to  a  group  of  social  workers  in 
New  York  some  time  ago  I  heard  a  reputable 
physician  say  that  there  are  in  Greater  New 
York  annually  50,000  new  cases  of  this  dreadful 
disease,  and  many  of  these  cases  are  innocent 
women  and  children  who  are  unwittingly  af- 
fected by  the  overcrowding  due  to  taking  in 
boarders,  and  the  resulting  unsanitary  condi- 
tions of  these  dwellings.^  These  are  only  some 
of  the  evil  results  of  overcrowding,  but  they 
will  serve  our  purpose  to  show  that  we  have  a 
real  problem  of  social  conditions  in  our  great 
cities  for  the  Church  to  help  solve,  and  we  know 
to-day  pretty  well  why  we  have  these  conditions 
existing. 

The  Causes  op  Congestioit 

Some  one  will  ask,  "If  these  results  are  so 
appalling,  why,  then,  do  people  crowd  into  these 
tenements  in  such  fashion  ? "  It  will  be  impos- 
sible in  this  short  review  to  relate  all  the  causes 
which  result  in  congestion,  but  we  may  name 
among  the  chief  ones  the  following : 

In  the  first  instance  the  great  city  itself  is 
an  attractive  force  constantly  drawing  from  the 


1  For  a  confirmation  of  these  facts  see  an  interesting  paper  de- 
livered before  the  American  Sociological  Society  at  Atlantic  City 
in  December,  1908,  published  in  the  American  Journal  of  Sociology 
for  April,  1909.  Compare  also  Warbasse,  "Medical  Sociology," 
chap.  viii. 


188  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

rural  districts  and  from  the  smaller  towns.  The 
statistics  of  the  growth  of  cities  from  decade  to 
decade  prove  that  the  city  itself  tends  to  reach 
a  condition  of  overcrowding.  Men  and  women 
as  individuals,  and  even  whole  families,  will 
crowd  into  the  great  cities  when  all  available 
economic  opportunities  have  been  taken,  and 
many  of  these  are  compelled  to  segregate  to  the 
slum. 

Secondly,  industry  will  go  where  there  is 
labor  in  abundance,  and  where  there  is  a  market 
for  the  output,  or  good  facilities  for  shipment 
by  railroads  or  by  steamship  lines  to  distant 
points.  This  means  that  the  people  who  work 
in  the  shops  or  mills  must  live  near  them,  for  a 
meager  wage  and  long  hours  forbid  them  the 
comforts  of  the  suburbanites.  Besides,  there 
is  often  lack  of  rapid  transit  for  such  as  they 
at  the  rush  hours  of  the  day.  The  laboring  man 
or  woman  cannot  afford  to  be  late,  for  another 
is  often  waiting  to  take  the  job  if  he  or  she 
is  absent  for  a  day,  or  is  not  prompt  in  the  per- 
formance of  duty.  Lack  of  transit  or  cheap 
fares  may  therefore  be  considered  as  another 
cause  of  congestion,  for  the  reason  that  the 
more  roomy  and  healthy  suburbs  are  not  within 
reach  of  the  workingman  of  this  class. 

A  third  reason  for  overcrowding  in  tenements 
is  the  high  rents  in  the  city.  This  in  many  cases 
takes  more  than  one  quarter  of  the  poor  man's 


THE  CITY  PROBLEM  189 

income,  hence  such  families  are  often  driven  to 
the  necessity  of  taking  in  boarders  at  great  in- 
convenience and  risk  of  morals  and  health  for 
the  sake  of  keeping  up  the  rent.  Therefore  it  is 
not  surprising  that  many  families  will  live  in 
overcrowded  rooms  in  spite  of  the  law  prohibit- 
ing such  a  practice. 

Race  affinity  among  foreigners  is  another 
frequent  cause  of  overcrowding.  This  impels 
them  to  take  in  their  landsmen  temporarily  or 
])ennanently  because  of  the  condition  of  many 
of  them  when  they  reach  the  port  of  entry,  and 
also  because  they  are  not  wanted  in  other  sec- 
tions of  the  city  or  country  where  there  pre- 
dominates a  different  racial  type  and  corre- 
sponding racial  prejudices. 

Still  another  cause  of  overcrowding  among 
the  foreigners  in  the  city  is  the  lack  of  hos- 
pitals, schools,  and  churches,  and  the  absence 
of  neighborly  sympathy  in  many  of  the  rural 
towns  and  villages,  and  upon  the  farm  where 
the  workers  are  needed,  wages  are  good,  the  air 
and  sunlight  are  cheap,  but  where  brotherly 
sympathy  for  the  alien  is  too  often  wanting. 
When  accident  occurs  in  a  mine  or  quarry,  or 
upon  the  farm,  or  when  sickness  comes,  there 
are  no  facilities  for  relief,  and  it  is,  therefore, 
no  wonder  that  these  laborers  crowd  the  cities, 
where  such  facilities  are  available,  and  where 
their  children  have  an  equal  chance  with  the 


190  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

children  of  the  natives  in  the  schools  and  in  the 
churches,  and  where  there  is  something  to  give 
them  amusement  and  diversion  from  the  weari- 
ness of  hard  labor. 

These  are  the  chief  causes  of  congestion, 
apart  from  the  ignorance  and  vice  that  blind 
many  of  these  unfortunates  to  something  bet- 
ter within  their  reach. 

The  Relief  of  Congestion 

The  way  out  of  difficulty  is  always  hard  to 
find  because  people  usually  go  into  difficulty 
blindly.  In  general,  I  would  say  that  the  way 
to  solve  any  difficult  social  problem  is  first  to 
get  at  the  causes  of  the  difficulty  to  be  met,  and 
then  seek  to  correct  the  errors  or  to  eliminate 
the  causes  altogether,  and  by  so  doing  we 
usually  reach  a  practicable  solution  of  our  diffi- 
culties. So  with  the  problem  of  congestion  of 
population  in  our  great  cities:  we  must  know 
the  causes  and  eliminate  them.  We  cannot, 
however,  always  do  this  in  a  radical  and  revo- 
lutionary way,  for  we  would  create  thereby 
greater  evils  than  we  hope  to  cure. 

In  the  first  place,  we  must  make  the  city  less 
attractive  to  the  many  by  making  the  country 
and  villages  more  attractive  and  desirable  for 
residence,  and  at  the  same  time  more  available 
to  those  who  work  in  the  city  but  already  desire 
to  live  in  the  suburbs.    Much  has  already  been 


THE  CITY  PEOBLEM  191 

done,  and  much  more  is  being  done  by  the  im- 
provement of  the  country  roads,  the  establish- 
ment by  the  postal  service  of  free  rural  de- 
livery, the  introduction  of  the  telephone,  the 
improvement  of  the  schools,  the  establishment 
of  country  and  village  hospitals,  the  inaugura- 
tion of  improved  methods  of  agriculture  which 
enable  the  farmer  to  more  readily  secure  an  in- 
dependent living  and  educate  his  family,  and 
the  establishment  of  the  College  of  Agriculture, 
that  is  lifting  the  occupation  of  fanning  to  the 
plane  of  a  profession.  The  establishment  of 
better  police  j^rotection  to  the  citizens  of  the 
rural  districts  has  also  contributed  much  to- 
ward making  the  country  districts  more  de- 
sirable for  residence.  This  will  give  the  poor 
man  a  feeling  of  security  with  respect  to  life 
and  property,  as  well  as  to  his  rights  as  a  citizen 
of  the  State.  All  this  would  greatly  stem  the 
tide  of  migration  from  country  to  city,  and 
would  greatly  increase  the  productivity  of  the 
farm,  and,  in  many  sections,  reduce  the  cost  of 
living  by  increased  production  of  the  neces- 
saries of  life  available  to  these  population 
centers. 

A  second  measure  of  relief  is  that  of  improv- 
ing the  housing  conditions  by  legislation  and  its 
rigorous  enforcement  against  the  abuse  of 
grasping  landlords  or  careless  tenants  whose 
avariciousness  and  stupidity  have  made  these 


192  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

conditions  possible.  Some  relief  is  also  given 
by  the  opening  up  of  parks,  as  at  ''Mulberry- 
Bend"  in  New  York,  in  the  most  congested 
quarters.  But  these  give  only  breathing  spaces ; 
the  people  must  return  to  their  crowded  homes 
under  the  same  conditions.  Another  measure 
of  temporary  relief  is  the  opening  of  public 
school  buildings  for  social  purposes,  the  build- 
ing of  roof  gardens  and  playgrounds,  recreation 
piers,  etc.,  also  night  schools,  where  are  taught 
better  methods  of  living  and  ways  of  betterment 
by  self-initiative. 

Another  effective  remedy  is  the  encouraging 
of  the  building  of  factories  in  the  suburbs,  thus 
drawing  away  from  the  crowded  centers  of  tene- 
ment population.  It  is  claimed  for  New  York 
city  and  its  adjacent  populous  centers  in  New 
Jersey,  that  when  the  proposed  tunnels  and 
bridges  and  railroad  facilities  leading  far  into 
the  country  districts  are  completed,  it  will  be 
possible  for  vast  numbers  of  the  well-to-do  now 
living  in  the  city  to  move  into  the  suburbs,  thus 
leaving  vacant  better  apartments  for  the  aspir- 
ing, and  later  cheapening  the  rent  for  such,  and 
correspondingly  reducing  the  rental  value  of 
the  tenements  in  the  now  congested  quarters, 
making  it  no  longer  necessary  for  the  wage- 
workers  to  take  in  boarders.  The  cheapening 
of  fares  to  the  suburbs  will  make  it  possible  for 
even  the  *' dinner-pail"  class  to  live  in  the  coun- 


THE  CITY  PKOBLEM  193 

try  and  reach  the  city  in  time  for  their  daily 
tasks,  especially  in  those  industries  that  have 
reduced  the  hours  of  labor  to  an  eight-hour  day. 

Cooperative  tenement-house  and  home-build- 
ing companies  offer  encouraging  relief  for 
some.  The  distribution  of  immigrants  by  the 
new  Department  of  Information  in  the  Bureau 
of  Immigration  will  greatly  help  to  relieve  the 
overcrowding  in  colonies  of  the  same  races  in 
the  cities.  Institutions  established  by  the  Chris- 
tian denominations,  like  that  conducted  by  the 
United  Hebrew  Charities  for  the  distribution  of 
Jewish  immigrants  to  economic  opportunities 
in  agricultural  and  industrial  and  other  pur- 
suits, would  greatly  aid  in  the  solution  of  the 
problem.  During  the  six  years  from  1901  to 
1907  the  Hebrew  Society  removed  over  30,000 
persons,  28,000  of  whom  were  sent  from  New 
York  city. 

Better  wages  and  fewer  hours  per  day,  so  as 
to  give  time  for  the  culture  of  the  mind  in  better 
ways  of  living  and  thinking,  will  be  the  best 
method  of  relieving  many  who  now  are  awake 
to  their  needs  but  lack  the  chance  to  realize 
their  hopes.  We  see,  therefore,  that  the  prob- 
lem of  congestion  of  population  can  be  solved 
if  we  will  do  all  we  can  to  promote  the  meas- 
ures thereto  that  we  know. 


CHAPTER  XVII 

PREVENTIVE  SOCIAL  ENGINEERING 

There  is  no  subject  in  the  minds  of  social 
workers  to-day  in  every  field  of  philanthropic 
effort  of  greater  importance  than  that  of  pre- 
vention. In  the  medical  profession,  where  we 
have  been  wont  to  think  there  was  too  little 
interest  given  to  the  prevention  of  diseases,  we 
to-day  hear  this  most  significant  and  hopeful 
note  of  progress :  ''The  plea  that  goes  out  to  the 
public  from  the  great  heart  of  the  medical  pro- 
fession to-day  is  that  prevention  shall  take  the 
place  of  cure.  Medical  knowledge  has  reached 
that  point  when  much  of  it  can  be  taken  by  the 
public,  and  without  medical  aid,  applied  to  the 
end  of  preventing  diseases."  "Again  and 
again  medicine  appeals  to  the  people  to  take  the 
measures  necessary  to  stop  typhoid,  tubercu- 
losis, yellow  fever,  plague,  cholera,  gonorrhea, 
syi^hilis,  and  the  many  other  destructive  dis- 
eases which  are  clearly  preventable."^  "If," 
says  Dr.  Warbasse, ' '  as  much  money  and  enter- 
prise as  have  been  bestowed  upon  hospitals 
were  devoted  to  preventing  the  diseases  which 
are  treated  in  hospitals,  the  hospitals  would  be 

»  See  "Medical  Sociology,"  by  Warbasse,  pp.  x,  xi  of  the  Preface. 
194 


PEEVENTIVE  SOCIAL  ENGINEEKING     195 

much  less  important  figures  than  they  are  at 
the  present."^ 

Nowhere  have  we  seen  in  modern  times  a 
better  illustration  of  this  principle  in  practice 
by  the  medical  profession  than  in  the  Japanese 
army  during  the  war  with  Russia.  And  one 
of  the  most  hopeful  signs  of  the  times  is  the 
great  foundations  now  established  by  men  of 
great  wealth  for  the  study  of  the  causes  and 
prevention  of  many  of  the  diseases  which  afflict 
mankind.  Besides,  we  have  also  the  splendid 
work  of  the  national  and  State  governments 
that  are  endeavoring  to  carry  on  a  similar 
beneficent  work  for  humanity.^ 

Prevention  of  Germinal  Diseases 

Now,  it  is  not  necessary  that  the  multitudes 
of  young  men  and  women  of  our  communities 
should  be  trained  in  the  technique  of  the  medi- 
cal profession  in  order  to  be  efficient  in  the  work 
of  prevention,  but  many  of  them  can  engage  in 
this  work  by  using  the  knowledge  already  given 
out  in  such  simple  form  that  the  most  unskilled 
layman  can  do  something  to  help  in  the  preven- 
tion of  germinal  diseases.  For  example,  when 
by  a  thorough  analysis  by  an  expert  the  wafer 
supply  of  a  city  is  declared  contaminated  with 


>  See  "Medical  Sociology,"  by  Warbasse,  p.  26. 

'  Compare  also  "Report  on  Death  Rates  in  the  City  of  Panama, 
of  the  Canal  Zone,  and  of  the  Canal  Employees."  New  York  Trib- 
une, November  9,  1910. 


196  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

typhoid  germs,  it  does  not  require  medical  at- 
tention to  boil  the  water  before  using,  or  to  vote 
for  the  building  of  a  filter  plant  by  the  city,  or 
advocate  an  ordinance  controlling  the  water- 
shed supplying  the  reservoir.  Again,  when  the 
medical  profession  has  proven  beyond  a  doubt 
that  yellow  fever  is  carried  from  one  person  to 
another  by  infectious  mosquitoes,  it  does  not  re- 
quire an  expert  to  inform  the  common  people 
how  to  sleep  under  screens,  or  how  to  sterilize 
the  breeding  places  of  this  pest.  If  we  know 
that  tuberculosis  can  be  prevented  by  fresh  air 
and  fresh  eggs,  it  does  not  require  very  much 
technique  to  give  the  information  to  the  masses 
of  the  people  in  every  community  that  will  en- 
able them  to  prevent  this  scourge,  or  to  arrest 
it  in  its  incipient  stages.  So  it  seems  to  me  that 
one  of  the  most  useful  services  we  could  render 
as  workers  in  the  community  would  be  active  co- 
operation with  the  Anti-Tuberculosis  Associa- 
tion of  the  State,  or  with  the  local  committee  in 
the  town  or  city  in  which  we  dwell,  in  spreading 
health-maintaining  and  health-restoring  infor- 
mation among  the  masses  of  the  people.  The 
churches  need  not  wait  for  some  outside  associa- 
tion to  take  the  lead  in  this  work.  They  could 
readily  get  together  and  conduct  an  exhibit  and 
educate  a  whole  town  on  the  subject  of  all  pre- 
ventable diseases. 

Another  case  where  preventive  work  in  so- 


PREVENTIVE  SOCIAL  ENGINEERING     197 

cial  service  may  be  carried  on  in  many  com- 
munities is  that  of  those  germinal  diseases  due 
to  unlawful  sex-relationship.  In  view  of  the 
character  of  these  diseases,  it  is  almost  impos- 
sible for  the  social  worker  to  do  anything  to- 
ward their  cure,  hence  all  his  efforts  as  a 
layman  must  be  exerted  along  the  lines  of 
prevention.  A  medical  authority  of  high 
standing  has  stated  that  in  New  York  city  in 
1901,  162,372  cases  of  these  shocking  diseases 
were  treated  in  the  private  practice  of  phy- 
sicians.^ These  figures — and  many  others  as 
appalling  that  could  be  given — should  arouse 
the  public  to  the  necessity  of  casting  off  any 
notions  it  may  have  of  mock  modesty,  and  tak- 
ing up  in  earnest  the  work  of  prevention  of  one 
of  the  greatest  social  evils  that  have  vitally 
touched  human  life  in  every  period  of  history. 
"Let  us  not  make  the  mistake  of  saying  that 
this  is  a  filthy  subject,  and  that  we  cannot  touch 
it.  I  have  heard  this  said  by  those  who,  while 
professing  to  fight  evil,  confined  the  fight  to 
nice,  genteel  evils  which  are  chiefly  matters  of 
the  imagination  and  of  belief.  No,  it  is  a  clean 
and  glorious  thing  to  say  the  word  that  shall 
save  a  young  man  or  woman  from  invalidism 
and  moral  discouragement.  There  are  things 
to  be  said  and  things  to  be  done  which  should 
be  said  frankly  and  done  boldly. '  '- 

>  See  Warbasse,  "Sociology,"  p.  79.  ^  Warbasse,  op.  cit.,  p.  81. 


198  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

I  cannot  conceive  of  a  father  or  mother  who 
would  on  any  reasonable  grounds  refuse  to  in- 
form his  son  or  her  daughter  of  the  dangers 
and  how  to  avoid  them.  Likewise  I  cannot 
admit  that  wise  teachers  of  adolescent  boys  and 
girls  in  the  Sunday  schools  and  high  schools, 
knowing  the  facts,  should  fail  to  give  them 
the  information  that  would  prevent  them  from 
going  blindly  into  the  ways  of  sin. 

Prevention  of  Drunkenness 

There  is  no  field  of  jDreventive  work  that  has 
taken  on  such  proportions  as  that  of  the  tem- 
perance movement.  In  this  movement  the 
churches  are  already  enlisted,  but  there  are  cer- 
tain phases  of  service  that  could  well  be  under- 
taken by  the  people  of  the  community  who  are 
dominated  by  Christian  motives.  Some  people 
have  sought  to  justify  the  existence  of  the  sa- 
loon because  of  its  significance  as  a  social  center 
for  a  large  class  of  people,  who,  because  of  their 
family  life,  or  the  lack  of  it,  have  no  other  place 
to  go  for  social  recreation.  Now,  there  is  little 
hope  of  succeeding  with  any  large  number  of 
those  who  already  have  acquired  the  drink 
habit,  but  it  is  possible  for  us  to  jjrovide  social 
centers,  under  the  auspices  of  the  best  elements 
in  the  community,  that  will  be  a  substitute  for 
the  saloon  as  a  social  rendezvous,  and  at  the 
same  time  prevent  the  acquiring  of  the  habit. 


PKEVENTIVE  SOCIAL  ENGINEERING     199 

Still  another  phase  of  preventive  work  that 
promises  to  count  for  most,  in  my  judgment, 
is  the  creation  of  the  moral-political  issue  of  the 
abolishing  of  the  saloon  in  such  a  way  that  good 
men  and  women,  irrespective  of  any  other  mo- 
tive, will  be  convinced  that  here  is  an  issue  that 
any  jjolitical  party  that  stands  for  good  gov- 
ernment must  adopt.  It  has  been  largely  the 
result  of  such  a  view  that  prohibition  of  the 
traffic  has  been  secured  in  most  of  the  territory 
now  "dry." 

Another  phase  of  prevention  is  represented 
by  that  large  number  of  men  who  want  to  over- 
come the  habit,  but  have  not  the  social  bond  that 
will  keep  them  keyed  up  to  resolution  in  the 
hour  of  temptation.  Take,  for  example,  a  fine 
mechanic,  as  fine  an  old  man  as  you  would  want 
to  meet,  who  had  not  ''touched  a  drop"  for  six 
months ;  but  in  the  midst  of  an  important  work 
on  a  contract  for  painting  a  new  house  was 
tempted  to  drink  at  an  "  Irish  wake ' '  one  even- 
ing— and  down  he  went  to  the  level  of  the  beast 
for  two  months,  until  he  had  lost  his  job  and 
some  of  his  best  friends.  Now,  his  family  spent 
much,  and  so  did  he,  in  rectifying  the  evil  re- 
sults of  his  debauch,  but  would  it  not  have  been 
infinitely  wiser  to  guard  him  at  the  moment  of 
the  initial  temptation,  and  thus  prevent  such  a 
humiliating  experience?  So  I  believe  that  in 
every  community,  where  such  cases  are  known, 


200  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

it  would  be  possible  for  a  group  of  young  men 
to  guard  sucli  a  man  in  such  moments  until 
his  psychic  process  is  again  dominated  by  saner 
motives.  If  he  were  given  to  spells  of  insanity, 
his  friends  would  have  guarded  him;  why 
not  in  the  case  of  an  inebriate,  when  the  results 
of  conduct  are  so  disastrous  to  the  family  or 
community  both  from  a  moral  and  an  economic 
point  of  view? 

Still  another  phase  of  prevention  of  drunken- 
ness is  in  the  study  of  the  causes  which  pro- 
duce the  physical  and  nervous  conditions  which 
cause  the  craving  for  stimulants  and  result  in 
permanent  cases  of  inebriety.  In  such  cases 
the  work  of  prevention  must  be  more  complex, 
reaching  to  the  changing  of  the  conditions  of 
occupation  and  of  housing  that  are  causal  to 
such  nervous  and  physical  disability.  Now,  it 
is  easier  to  create  enthusiasm  for  the  treatment 
of  the  results  of  certain  causes  than  it  is  to 
arouse  people  to  prevent  the  causes  themselves 
or  remove  them.  Here  is  where  intelligent  dis- 
cussion leads  to  more  vital  results.  It  is  cer- 
tain that  if  the  people  of  the  community  could 
be  led  to  see  the  possibility  of  removing  the 
causes  of  any  specific  evil,  they  would  be  as 
enthusiastic  in  their  service  of  prevention  as 
they  are  in  the  treatment  of  the  more  spectacu- 
lar and  impressive  results  that  are  immediately 
seen  and  felt. 


PREVENTIVE  SOCIAL  ENGINEERING     201 

Preventive  Criminology 

Apart  from  a  life  of  impurity,  there  is  no  evil 
from  which  it  is  more  difficult  to  rescue  a  man 
than  that  of  crime,  hence  the  greater  need  for 
preventive  social  engineering  in  his  behalf. 
The  emphasis  to-day  in  enlightened  penology 
is  placed  upon  keeping  the  man  out  of  prison  as 
long  as  possible,  for  we  know  that  in  the  ma- 
jority of  cases  prison  life  tends  to  make  men 
more  criminal  on  their  release  than  before  they 
entered  prison.  In  most  instances  of  crime  we 
find  that  somebody  has  been  trying  to  gratify 
a  normal  desire  in  an  abnormal  or  unlawful 
way,  and  this  gives  us  the  clue  to  preventive 
work  in  this  field,  namely,  the  providing  for  the 
incipient  criminal  the  things  which  he  has 
missed.  Take,  for  example,  the  practice  of  theft 
or  robbery:  it  begins  with  some  simple  act  in 
childhood  where  normal  cravings  are  met  by  the 
youth  unrestrained,  and  the  result  is  an  abnor- 
mal habit  which  results  in  the  practice  of  law- 
lessness. The  reverse  of  this  has  been  dis- 
covered in  cities  where  institutions  have  been 
established  to  provide  the  apparatus  for  meet- 
ing these  normal  desires  of  childhood,  resulting 
in  the  elimination  of  juvenile  crime  in  a  whole 
district.  The  boys '  club  and  the  municipal  play- 
ground furnish  us  examples  of  these  beneficent 
results.     In  such  institutions  things  that  boys 


202  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

desire  are  provided  in  an  institutional  way  with- 
out the  stigma  of  charity,  while  the  temptation 
to  steal  is  removed,  or  to  trespass  is  made 
undesirable.  Another  phase  of  prevention  of 
crime  is  the  rebuking  of  incipient  wrongdoing. 
This  is  especially  true  of  the  children  of  for- 
eigners in  this  country.  From  recent  statistics 
taken  from  the  records  of  one  of  our  large  cities, 
while  the  largest  per  cent  of  adult  crimes  were 
committed  by  native  Americans,  yet  the  large 
majority  of  juvenile  offenses  were  committed 
by  the  children  of  foreigners.  I  think  much  of 
this  is  due  to  the  fact  that  we  do  not  rebuke 
initial  wrongdoing.  For  example,  in  one  of  our 
suburban  towns  the  children  of  foreigners  are 
often  seen  taking  fruits,  vegetables,  flowers, 
etc.,  from  the  gardens,  lawns,  and  orchards  of 
the  citizens,  unrebuked  by  the  owners  for  fear 
of  exciting  the  enmity  of  their  parents,  or  the 
members  of  the  ''Black  Hand."  Now,  it  is  not 
difficult  to  see  that  such  conduct  unchecked 
would  soon  lead  to  taking  property  of  greater 
value,  and  what  was  a  mere  juvenile  misde- 
meanor may,  in  adult  life,  become  a  serious 
crime.  Hence  it  seems  to  me  that  preventive 
work  among  this  class  becomes  an  imperative 
duty.  It  cannot  be  expected,  however,  that  such 
preventive  work  can  be  carried  on  successfully 
by  individuals  here  and  there,  without  any  con- 
certed effort.    There  must  be  the  support  of  the 


PREVENTIVE  SOCIAL  ENGINEERING     20;? 

like-minded  and  the  impersonal  element  of  the 
organization  to  make  such  work  effective.  For 
instance,  it  is  not  possible  to  stop  cruelty  to 
children  by  depending  on  the  individuals  of  a 
neighborhood  for  convincing  evidence,  but  a 
society  like  the  Society  for  the  Prevention  of 
Cruelty  to  Children  can  and  does  carry  on  the 
work  of  prevention  in  a  very  efficient  way 
through  the  power  of  organization. 

Preventive  Work  for  Defectives 

Here  we  have  in  mind  especially  the  insane, 
the  idiotic,  and  the  blind.  Preventive  work  for 
all  these  is  largely  that  of  information.  When 
we  know  that  the  facts  of  idiocy,  and  in  many 
cases  insanity,  are  due  to  defective  parentage, 
it  reduces  itself  to  a  question  of  prevention  of 
the  marriage  or  cohabitation  of  the  unfit.  Many 
of  the  States  have  laws  which  do  jorohibit  such 
marriages,  but  there  is  lacking  that  public  opin- 
ion in  many  places  that  alone  can  make  such 
legislation  eifective.  In  the  case  of  total  blind- 
ness we  know  that  more  than  one  third  are 
directly  caused  by  a  disease  contracted  in  the 
eye  of  the  infant  at  birth  which  could  have  been 
cured  by  a  simple  known  remedy,  if  the  mother 
or  attendant  had  been  acquainted  with  the  fact. 
Here  is  a  chance  to  do  ''greater  works"  than 
the  healing  of  blindness  by  preventing  blind- 
ness.   We  may  not  hoj^e  even  to  heal  one  blind 


204  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

Bartimaeus  by  the  wayside,  but  it  was  within 
the  power  of  enlightened  Christian  society  to 
prevent  more  than  one  third  of  the  fifty  thou- 
sand cases  of  total  blindness  in  the  institutions 
for  blindness  in  the  State  of  New  York  alone, 
to  say  nothing  of  the  thousands  elsewhere.  Our 
task  in  such  cases  is  the  spread  of  preventive 
knowledge  that  has  healing  in  its  appropriate 
use. 

If  we  know  that  certain  lines  of  conduct  or 
mental  strain  produce  insanity,  it  is  only  a  small 
part  of  our  duty  to  provide  for  the  victims — our 
chief  task  should  be  the  prevention  of  that  con- 
duct and  the  cessation  of  that  mental  strain. 

Preventhte  "VVork  Agaiistst  Pauperism 

It  must  be  understood  at  the  outset  that  a 
poor  man  is  not  necessarily  a  pauper,  but  it  is 
quite  an  easy  thing  for  a  poor  man  to  be  made 
a  pauper.  The  prevention  of  'poverty  is  an 
economic  question  of  the  greatest  social  signifi- 
cance and  would  require  a  treatise  in  itself  for 
an  adequate  discussion,  but  the  prevention  of 
pauperism  is  a  social  question  that  most  indi- 
viduals can  readily  help  solve.  We  have  to-day 
established  in  most  of  our  large  cities  charity 
organization  societies  which  are  conducted  upon 
scientific  and  humane  principles  for  dealing 
with  the  pauper,  and  it  is  ovAj  a  matter  of  com- 
mon sense  that  we  should  utilize  such  institu- 


PREVENTIVE  SOCIAL  ENGINEERING     205 

tions  in  dealing  with  any  specific  case  rather 
than  trust  to  our  own  inexperience  and  hap- 
hazard methods  of  dealing  with  them  at  the 
door.  What  possible  harm  can  come  to  a  worthy 
case  if  escorted  to  headquarters  ? — while  at  the 
same  time  possible  evil  both  to  the  man  and  to 
the  community  could  be  perpetuated  by  giving 
without  due  investigation.  When  we  know  by 
scientific  investigation  of  thousands  of  cases 
that  ninety-five  per  cent  of  all  cases  of  begging 
at  the  door  are  unworthy  paupers,  is  it  not  time 
we  cease  being  worried  over  the  feelings  of  the 
possible  five  per  cent  who  could  receive  even 
better  treatment  at  the  hands  of  trained  work- 
ers in  an  organization?  Here,  it  seems  to  me, 
is  where  the  ^^war  on  tramps^'  should  be  prose- 
cuted with  vigor.  But  we  are  not  unmindful  of 
preventive  work  to  be  done  by  our  educational 
system,  and  by  other  forms  of  constructive  so- 
cial service,  in  preventing  the  tramp  habit  being 
formed,  as  it  so  often  is  on  ''Railroad  Street,'* 
in  all  the  towns  along  these  great  thoroughfares. 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

PREVENTIVE  SALVATION 

We  have  found  in  the  treatment  of  specific 
social  problems  so  far  that  the  modern  worker 
in  the  fields  of  charity  and  philanthropy  is 
turning  his  attention  to  the  study  of  prevention 
rather  than  that  of  cure.  This  has  been 
brought  about  by  the  fact  of  the  growing  need 
of  an  increased  budget  for  dealing  with  the 
victims  of  the  social  ills  of  modern  civilization. 
In  almost  every  State  where  the  people  are 
alert  to  the  problem  of  charity  there  is  at 
every  meeting  of  the  Legislature  some  meas- 
ure proposed  which  involves  the  increase  in  the 
charity  budget.  Buildings  of  larger  dimensions, 
grounds  more  spacious,  workers  more  efficient, 
and  in  larger  numbers,  experts  in  every  field, 
all  are  demanded  in  modern  times  to  meet  the 
situation  so  well  understood.  All  this  has  led 
logically  and  inevitably  to  the  study  of  the 
problem  of  preventive  salvation  in  the  field  of 
philanthropy  and  charity,  the  study  of  prevent- 
able causes  that  make  all  this  work  necessary. 

The  nation  has  recently  awakened  to  the  idea 
of  conservation  of  our  natural  resources  by  the 
same  process  of  reasoning  and  experience.    Men 

206 


PKEVENTIVE  SALVATION  207 

Tvho  have  observed  the  expense  involved  in  dis- 
astrous floods  caused  by  denuded  water-sheds 
through  the  destruction  of  forest,  through  un- 
scientific forestry,  through  preventable  forest 
fires — often  due  to  the  careless  hunter,  or  more 
frequently  to  locomotives  emitting  sparks  from 
their  unprotected  funnels  on  an  up  grade — or  by 
reckoning  the  cost  of  fuel  and  building  ma- 
terial by  wasteful  methods  of  mining  and  lum- 
bering— such  men  to-day  are  turning  the  nation 
to  the  study  of  preventive  salvation  of  our 
natural  resources. 

Also  in  the  work  of  the  Church  men  of  far- 
seeing  spiritual  statesmanship,  having  dis- 
covered the  enormous  costs  in  energy  and  re- 
sources expended  in  winning  men  back  to  the 
Christian  way  from  which  they  wandered  dur- 
ing the  adolescent  period,  or  from  which  they 
have  fallen  through  grosser  sin  in  adult  life, 
are  now  placing  emphasis  upon  the  work  of 
preventive  salvation — those  activities  neces- 
sary to  prevent  our  young  people  of  the  con- 
gregation and  of  the  Sunday  school  from  going 
to  the  bad. 

Now,  it  should  be  understood  at  the  outset 
that  those  who  insist  upon  more  attention  being 
given  to  this  phase  of  church  work  have  no  in- 
tention of  minimizing  the  value  of  rescue  in  the 
work  of  saving  the  world.  It  is  simply  a  matter 
of  emphasis.    In  speaking  upon  a  similar  point 


208  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

in  my  inaugural  address  at  Drew  Theological 
Seminary,  I  gave  this  illustration,  which  I  wish 
to  repeat  here  because  it  meets  the  case  in  point : 
* '  Some  years  ago,  in  observing  the  work  of  life 
guards  at  Ocean  Grove,  the  chief  of  whom  was 
a  strong  Princeton  athlete,  I  noticed  that  dur- 
ing the  whole  summer  only  three  or  four  per- 
sons had  to  be  rescued  from  the  surf,  and  those 
had  all  ventured  too  far  beyond  the  guard  lines 
against  advice.  But  I  learned  that  the  chief 
business  of  these  strong  men  was  to  keep  people 
from  going  beyond  the  danger  point.  In  other 
words,  the  emphasis  of  the  summer's  work  was 
upon  preventing  people  from  going  into  danger 
rather  than  in  rescue.  Now  to  the  popular 
mind,  the  spectacular  rescue  of  the  three  or 
four  persons  was  of  more  consequence  in  esti- 
mating the  worth  of  the  guards  than  the  safety 
of  the  thousands  of  men  and  women  and  little 
children  who  had  been  prevented  from  going 
out  too  far. ' '  And  I  added  on  that  occasion  the 
following  comment:  ''Now,  I  believe  that  the 
work  of  the  Christian  Church,  represented  by 
its  ministry  and  by  the  splendid  young  life  in 
our  brotherhoods,  clubs,  leagues,  and  other  so- 
cieties, is  going  to  be  successful  in  the  future 
by  placing  emphasis  on  keeping  the  young  peo- 
ple from  going  out  beyond  the  danger  points 
in  the  social  tides  all  about  them.  To  be  sure, 
we  must  have  men  as  leaders,  men  who,  like  the 


PEEVENTIVE  SALVATION  209 

Princeton  athlete,  could  do  the  work  of  rescue 
if  needed;  but  they  must  place  the  greatest 
emphasis  in  their  program  upon  preventive 
measures." 

The  Value  of  Prevention 

It  is  not  difficult  to  see  the  value  of  preven- 
tive salvation  when  applied  to  the  work  of  the 
local  church  or  Sunday  school.  We  sometimes 
see  prizes  given  to  children  for  bringing  in  new 
members  to  the  school.  This  is  good,  but  do  we 
pay  enough  attention  to  child  study  that  would 
enable  us  to  see  when  the  boy  or  girl  is  likely 
to  drop  out  of  school  and  church  service,  or  our 
attention  to  such  cases  so  that  they  would  be 
prevented  from  going  astray  altogether?  Al- 
most any  church  located  in  a  growing  resident 
community  can  increase  its  membership  every 
year  by  taking  care  of  the  boys  and  girls  who  are 
growing  up  to  the  period  of  adolescence  when 
they  are  most  susceptible  to  Christian  appeal. 
Yet  we  find  many  such  churches  deploring  the 
fact  that  they  cannot  have  a  revival  of  the  old- 
time  sort  of  rescue  of  the  many  from  the  ways 
of  sin.  Now,  it  ought  to  be  possible  to  rescue 
such  if  they  live  in  a  community,  but  it  would 
be  more  pleasing  to  God  if  the  work  of  rescue 
were  not  necessary  because  the  work  of  pre- 
vention had  been  so  well  carried  on.  It  is  diffi- 
cult for  some  men  who  have  been  in  the  fervor 


210  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

of  revival  meetings  in  times  past  to  see  the 
significance  and  importance  of  so  changing  the 
environment  of  the  newly  converted  that  the 
habit  of  backsliding  will  become  a  rare  phe- 
nomenon. We  hold  for  a  period  of  years  the 
young  life  of  the  community  in  the  Sunday 
school.  We  win  by  revival  effort  and  everyday 
evangelism  many  adults  who  have  never  been 
vitally  related  to  the  work  of  the  Church,  yet 
we  seem  not  to  advance  very  rapidly  in  the  total 
increase  because  of  the  vast  number  who  drop 
out  of  the  Sunday  schools  during  the  period  of 
adolescence  or  backslide  after  the  revival  effort 
is  over.  Plainly,  it  requires  only  common  sense 
to  see  that  the  emphasis  must  be  placed  upon 
holding  what  we  have. 

Method  in  Preventive  Salvation 

Our  method  in  preventive  salvation  must  be 
directed  chiefly  toward  the  environment  of  our 
young  people,  as  well  as  toward  the  surround- 
ings of  those  of  older  years  who  have  been  won 
from  a  life  of  sin  by  revival  effort.  When  we 
come  to  make  a  thorough  study  of  the  causes 
of  lapses,  we  find  in  a  majority  of  cases  the 
causes  to  be  social  in  character,  hence  the 
natural  conclusion  would  be  that  our  remedy 
must  also  be  social.  Our  remedies  must  not 
only  include  the  forms  of  social  organization 
and  activity  in  which  we  can  engage  both,  but 


PREVENTIVE  SALVATION  211 

they  must  also  in  an  increasing  way  include  the 
ministry  of  personality — the  association  of 
presence.  AVe  have  not  utilized  this  method  to 
its  fullest  extent  in  church  work.  It  is  being 
used  with  marked  success  by  the  friendly 
visitor,  the  probation  officer,  in  dealing  with 
juvenile  delinquents;  also  in  the  "Big  Brother" 
movement  so  recently  started  in  the  city  of  New 
York,  and  which  has  been  quite  successful.  We 
must  learn  to  make  the  ministry  of  personality 
so  strongly  attractive  that  it  will  be  increasingly 
difficult  for  a  boy  or  girl,  a  man  or  woman,  to 
break  with  religious  associations. 

In  placing  the  emphasis  upon  the  regenera- 
tion of  environment  we  make  it  increasingly 
easy  for  a  man  to  keep  saved  after  he  has  been 
reclaimed  from  a  life  of  sin,  or  before  he  has 
had  a  chance  to  know  by  actual  experience  what 
vice  and  sin  really  are.  If  by  social  control 
within  the  power  of  all  good  men  and  women 
to  establish  we  could  make  society  what  it  ought 
to  be,  very  few  of  the  pure  boys  and  girls  of  our 
homes  would  ever  know  the  temptation  of  the 
street,  the  lure  of  the  dance  halls,  the  saloons, 
the  gambling  dens,  and  the  brothels,  the  easy  ap- 
proaches to  which  we  find  in  the  low  class  of 
amusements,  the  vicious  literature  with  the  at- 
tractive binding  and  illustrated  frontispiece, 
and  in  the  open  disregard  of  the  Sabbath  by 
many  who  are  otherwise  respectable  citizens. 


212  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

GUAKDING   THE   SoURCES   OF   LiFE 

In  preventive  salvation  supreme  emphasis 
must  be  placed  upon  the  guarding  of  the 
sources  of  life.  We  pointed  out  in  the  last 
chapter  how  the  lack  of  this  guardianship  has 
led  to  more  than  one  third  of  all  cases  of  total 
blindness  and  almost  all  cases  of  idiocy  and 
feeble-mindedness,  and,  to  a  large  extent,  in- 
sanity, to  say  nothing  of  the  many  social  dis- 
eases that  are  due  also  to  this  lack.  We  dis- 
cover in  practical  social  work  to-day  that  the 
environmental  sources  are  as  important  as  the 
hereditary,  if  not  more  so.  Some  social  workers 
with  long  experience  in  the  field  claim  that  en- 
vironment is  about  nine  tenths  of  destiny.  We 
know  from  the  actual  facts  in  the  treatment  of 
orphans  and  neglected  children  that  it  is  at  least 
eighty-five  per  cent  of  the  battle  for  good  citi- 
zenship. The  modification  of  environment  is 
one  of  the  most  important  methods  of  social 
science  to-day. 

A  social  heredity  may  be  constantly  re- 
newed by  the  activities  of  teachers  and  parents, 
for,  as  Professor  Patten  has  well  said,  "Health, 
vigor,  and  good  fortune  are  determined  by  to- 
day's environment."^  It  is,  therefore,  of  the 
greatest  importance  in  the  work  of  the  Church 
to-day  that  we  put  much  emphasis  on  the  trans- 

*  "The  New  Basis  of  Civilization." 


PREVENTIVE  SALVATION  213 

formation  of  environment  in  the  process  of  sav- 
ing individuals  in  society,  especially  when  we 
know  that  many  people  lose  interest  in  religious 
things  because  of  the  snares  and  temptations 
of  a  "wide-open"  town,  a  corrupt  and  grafting 
administration,  and  the  follies  of  society  that 
go  unchecked  because  of  open  license.  The  old 
Negro  in  the  South  was  correct  in  his  social 
philosophy,  as  well  as  up  to  date  in  his  method 
of  preventive  salvation,  when  in  his  prayer  he 
said,  ' '  0  Lord,  help  us  to  see  sin  away  off,  and 
shun  it  when  it  comes  nigh. ' ' 

Pkeventive  Salvation  Is  Not  Negative 

We  must  also  guard  ourselves  at  this  point 
from  the  common  assumption  that  preventive 
salvation  is  merely  negative  in  method.  It  is, 
on  the  contrary,  intensely  positive  and  active. 
It  not  only  believes  in  the  words  of  Paul, 
''Be  not  overcome  of  evil,"  but  it  also  places 
emphasis  on  the  other  half  of  his  splendid 
advice,  ''overcome  evil  with  good."  We  are 
not  only  to  guard  the  sources  of  life  for  our  age, 
but  we  are  also  to  guide  our  young  people  to  the 
sources  of  power.  We  are  to  give  them  the 
dynamic  of  the  spiritual  forces  that  are  avail- 
able to  the  one  who  prays  in  the  time  of  testing, 
and  also  show  them  the  strength  of  good  so- 
ciety, and  the  power  of  social  organization  in 
the  struggle  against  the  forces  that  make  for 


214  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

evil  in  this  world.  We  are  not  always  conscious 
of  the  extent  to  which  our  life  is  socialized  to- 
day, hence  we  sometimes  fail  on  this  account  to 
appreciate  the  significance  of  the  need  for  a 
new  social  method  in  dealing  in  a  positive  way 
with  the  forces  of  evil  about  us.  Professor 
Ross  well  states  this  modern  social  situation 
in  his  illuminating  little  book  entitled  ''Sin  and 
Society,"  in  these  words:  ''The  sinful  heart  is 
ever  the  same,  but  sin  changes  its  quality  as 
society  develops.  Modern  sin  takes  its  char- 
acter from  the  mutualism  of  our  time.  Under 
our  present  manner  of  living  how  many  of  my 
vital  interests  I  must  intrust  to  others !  Nowa- 
days the  water  main  is  my  well,  the  trolley  car 
my  carriage,  the  banker's  safe  my  old  stocking, 
the  policeman's  billy  my  fist.  My  own  eyes  and 
nose  and  judgment  defer  to  the  inspector  of 
food,  or  drugs,  or  gas,  or  factories,  or  tene- 
ments, or  insurance  companies.  I  rely  upon 
others  to  look  after  my  drain,  invest  mj^  sav- 
ings, nurse  my  sick,  and  teach  my  children.  I 
let  the  meat  trust  butcher  my  pig,  the  oil  trust 
mold  my  candles,  the  sugar  trust  boil  my  sor- 
ghum, the  coal  trust  cut  my  wood,  the  barbed 
wire  company  split  my  rails.  "^ 

The  only  possible  way  for  the  individual  to 
be  saved  from  the  sins  of  these  mighty  social 
forces  and  powers  in  modern  society  is  by  the 

1  "Sin  and  Society." 


PKEVENTIVE  SALVATION  216 

utilization  of  the  sources  of  power  through,  or- 
ganization, dominated  and  controlled  by  the 
religious  Christian  consciousness.  The  mar- 
tyrdom of  mothers  by  the  liquor  power  in  this 
country  is  poor  business  when  we  know  that  by 
united  organized  effort  we  can  close  the  saloon 
in  our  town  and  in  our  State.  Preventive  sal- 
vation does  not  stop  at  persuading  the  man  not 
to  drink,  but  it  goes  further  and  removes  the 
saloon  from  the  corner  where  he  must  pass. 

How  are  we  going  to  save  our  American 
cities  from  the  grafting  city  councilmen,  our 
States  from  boodling  assemblymen  and  sena- 
tors ?  Not  by  telling  these  men  to  be  good  but, 
rather,  by  insisting  at  the  next  town  and  State 
election  that  good  men  be  put  in  their  places. 
In  fact,  we  know  the  forces  of  preventive  sal- 
vation for  our  country  are  at  work  in  many 
quarters  to-day.  It  is  our  business  everywhere 
in  all  places  to  stand  by  these  men  in  this  fight 
until  we  have  won  out  for  clean  cities,  State 
and  national  government  in  every  department, 
and  then  it  will  be  easier  to  bring  wrongdoers 
in  business  and  conunercial  life  to  respect  the 
interests  of  society  better  than  some  of  them 
have  been  doing  of  late. 

Pkevektive  Salvation  Educational. 

I  believe   the   solution   of  the   problems   of 
social  sinning  in  our  time  as  illustrated  above 


216  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

is  to  come  by  changing  the  emphasis  in  our 
educational  process.  In  our  home  we  have  been 
engaged  for  seven  years  with  our  little  daugh- 
ter and  six  years  with  our  little  son  in  our  part 
of  the  educational  process ;  they  both  know  how 
to  take  care  of  themselves  pretty  well — I  should 
say  very  well,  so  far  as  the  educational  process 
has  been  completed  to  date.  They  both  have  a 
religious  consciousness  so  far  as  they  are 
capable  of  receiving  religious  teaching,  or  I 
should  say  in  so  far  as  they  have  been  given 
religious  instruction,  so  that  they  know  how 
and  when  to  pray,  to  give  thanks  at  table,  go  to 
church  and  Sunday  school,  and  appreciate  the 
reading  of  God's  Word.  Now,  I  cannot  con- 
ceive of  these  two  children  growing  up  and 
going  to  the  bad,  if  we  continue  properly  the 
educational  process,  and  our  work  is  not  neu- 
tralized or  destroyed  by  the  work,  example,  and 
teaching  of  others.  Preventive  salvation  and 
normal  development  have  been  the  two  chief 
God-given  factors  in  this  process.  So  it  seems 
to  me  that  it  lies  within  the  power  of  the  Chris- 
tian Church,  represented  by  the  various  factors 
in  the  educational  process  of  our  civilization,  so 
to  direct  the  lives  of  the  young  within  her  grasp 
(and  there  is  no  good  reason  why  she  should  not 
get  them  all  in  some  communities)  that  ulti- 
mately it  would  be  almost  impossible  for  men 
and  women  to  become  guilty  of  such  conduct 


PREVENTIVE  SALVATION  217 

as  is  being  revealed  every  day  in  every  part  of 
our  country,  especially  if  they  have  been  or 
are  now  members  of  Christian  homes,  Sunday 
schools,  and  churches.  This  cannot  become  the 
case  if  we  in  our  entire  educational  process — in 
home,  in  school,  in  church  and  college,  in  the 
public  meeting  and  in  the  public  press — put  su- 
preme emphasis  (not  to  the  neglect  of  the  re- 
demptive factors)  upon  the  preventive  factors 
of  social  salvation. 


CHAPTER  XIX 

SOCIAL    SINNING   AND    SOCIAL    SALVATION 

In  the  last  chapter  we  considered  the  sub- 
ject of  preventive  salvation,  and  we  said  that 
'Hhose  who  insist  upon  more  attention  being 
given  to  this  phase  of  church  work  have  no  in- 
tention of  minimizing  the  value  of  rescue  in 
the  work  of  saving  the  world."  We  simply 
showed  the  value  of  prevention  and  pointed  out 
the  method  to  be  pursued,  especially  that  of 
'^guarding  the  sources  of  life,"  and  the  educa- 
tional factor  in  preventive  salvation.  We  come 
now  to  the  discussion  of  a  subject  that  has  vital 
interest  for  the  church  worker  of  to-day,  as  well 
as  for  the  public-spirited  citizens  of  every  com- 
munity, namely,  social  sinning  and  social  sal- 
vation. 

Definition 

By  the  term  '' social  sinning"  we  mean  not 
only  the  conduct  of  the  individual  that  does 
harm  to  society  but  also  the  conduct  of  the  com- 
munity that  may  harm  the  individual,  or  do  in- 
justice to  another  community,  and  thus  the  idea 
may  be  extended  indefinitely  to  all  responsible 
social  groups.  By  the  term  "social  salvation" 
we  mean  not  only  the  conduct  of  the  individual 

218 


SOCIAL  SINNING  219 

consciously  or  unconsciously  directed  toward 
the  saving  of  society,  but  also  the  conduct  of  the 
group  consciously  directed  toward  the  saving 
of  the  individuals  or  the  individual  groups  from 
any  form  of  peril  in  which  it  may  find  them.  In 
other  words,  it  is  that  intelligent  process  that 
takes  into  account  all  the  causes  of  human  ills 
and  wrongs  and  seeks  in  an  organized  way  to 
control  them,  that  salvation  both  to  the  indi- 
vidual and  to  the  communitj^  at  large  may  be 
made  possible. 

The  character  of  social  sinning  is  not  so 
easily  understood  because  of  the  fact  that  we 
are  accustomed  to  localize  consciousness  in  the 
individual,  and  likewise  the  question  of  guilt 
is  referred  to  the  individual,  though  the  group 
or  society  at  large  may  be  equally  involved. 
The  difficulty  in  understanding  social  salvation 
is  due  to  the  fact  that  we  are  accustomed  to 
l^lace  emphasis  upon  the  saved  rather  than  upon 
the  process  of  salvation.  For  example,  salva- 
tion with  reference  to  a  man  drowning  in  the 
surf  may  be  expressed  by  the  condition  of  ulq 
man  after  he  has  reached  the  shore,  but  the 
fact  of  salvation  may  be  equally  well  expressed 
in  the  life-saving  crew,  its  equipment  and  con- 
stant drill.  So  with  our  definitions  of  sin  and 
salvation  in  church  work,  we  are  so  apt  to  fix 
our  whole  attention  upon  the  act  or  conduct  of 
the  individual  without  reference  to  the  factors 


220  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

that  are  causal  to  his  condition  and  are  equally 
important  in  fixing  matters  of  merit  and  de- 
merit, responsibility  and  guilt.  We,  somehow, 
get  the  notion  that  fishing  a  man  out  of  the  canal 
is  salvation,  while  lighting  up  the  towpath  is 
something  else;  that  falling  in  the  canal  is  sin, 
while  failing  to  light  up  the  towpath  is  some- 
thing else.  We  can  more  easily  condemn  the 
man  in  the  gutter  than  ourselves  for  allowing 
the  saloon  to  exist  on  the  corner. 

It  is  easier  for  us  to  establish  a  rescue  mis- 
sion than  it  is  to  change  the  social  and  indus- 
trial conditions  that  produce  the  ''submerged 
tenth.'*  In  some  way  we  are  accustomed  to 
emphasize  sin  and  salvation  more  upon  the  re- 
vival efforts  that  win  men  and  women  for  the 
Church  than  we  do  upon  condemning  the  neglect 
of  the  nurture  and  education  that  allowed  so 
many  to  drift  away  from  the  Church,  or  upon 
the  graded  system  of  Sunday  school  instruction 
and  the  social  character  of  enlightened  church 
activity  that  may  keep  the  young  people  in  the 
kingdom.  Now,  it  is  just  this  phase  of  sin  and 
this  phase  in  the  process  of  salvation  that  I 
wish  to  emphasize  in  this  chapter.  The  divine 
factor  in  salvation  is  just  the  same,  and  the  in- 
dividual element  is  just  as  important,  but  the 
social  factors  both  in  the  results  of  sin  and  in 
the  process  of  salvation  are  of  tremendous 
significance  and  need  to  be  considered. 


SOCIAL  SINNING  221 

The  Social  Perspective  of  Sin 

At  the  outset  it  is  necessary  for  us  to  get  a 
social  perspective  of  sin  before  we  can  become 
very  efficient  in  our  methods  of  social  salvation. 
For  example,  when  I  was  a  student  in  college  I 
remember  one  day  when  a  workman  was  killed 
in  repairing  a  house  on  the  main  street  of  the 
city  by  a  falling  fragment  of  rock  because  there 
was  no  protection  overhead  for  pedestrians  on 
the  sidewalk  below.  In  that  same  town  a  man 
was  hanged  in  short  order,  after  a  brief  trial, 
for  killing  a  policeman  in  cold  blood  as  he 
walked  his  beat  at  midnight.  Now,  in  the  latter 
case  there  was  no  need  for  a  social  perspective 
to  recognize  the  quality  of  the  crime  committed, 
but  in  the  former  case  it  took  ten  years  or  more 
to  get  a  law  enforced  to  compel  contractors  to 
safeguard  their  employees  while  at  work  on  a 
building.  If  the  contractor  had  deliberately 
felled  this  man  with  a  rock  he  would  have  been 
dealt  with  as  summarily  by  the  law  through  the 
force  of  public  opinion  as  was  the  cold-blooded 
murderer,  but  the  result  to  the  man  and  to  so- 
cietj^  through  neglect  to  protect  the  workman 
was  from  the  social  viewpoint  equally  bad,  and 
the  conduct  that  was  causal  to  it  equally  sinful. 

In  speaking  of  the  ''New  Varieties  of  Sin" 
and  the  slowness  of  the  public  to  recognize 
them,  Professor  Ross  says:  "People  are  senti- 


222  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

mental,  and  bastinado  wrongdoing  not  accord- 
ing to  its  harmfulness  but  according  to  the  in- 
famy that  has  come  to  attach  to  it.  Undis- 
cerning,  they  chastise  with  scorpions  the  old 
authentic  sins  but  spare  the  new.  They  do  not 
see  that  boodling  is  treason,  that  blackmail  is 
piracy,  that  embezzlement  is  theft,  that  specula- 
tion is  gambling,  that  tax-dodging  is  larceny, 
that  railroad  discrimination  is  treachery,  that 
the  factory  labor  of  children  is  slavery,  that 
deleterious  adulteration  is  murder."^  And, 
further,  in  showing  the  need  for  a  new  ''grad- 
ing of  sinners,"  he  states  in  his  inimitable  way: 
''To-day  the  villain  most  in  need  of  curbing  is 
the  respectable,  exemplary,  trusted  personage, 
who,  strategically  placed  at  the  focus  of  a 
spiderweb  of  fiduciary  relations,  is  able  from 
his  office  chair  to  pick  a  thousand  pockets, 
poison  a  thousand  sick,  pollute  a  thousand 
minds,  or  imperil  a  thousand  lives.  It  is  the 
great-scale,  high-voltage  sinner  that  needs  the 
shackle.  To  strike  harder  at  the  petty  pick- 
pocket than  at  the  prominent  and  unabashed 
person  who  in  a  large  impressive  way  sells  out 
his  constituents,  his  followers,  his  depositors, 
his  stockholders,  his  policy  holders,  his  sub- 
scribers, or  his  customers,  is  to  '  strain  at  a  gnat 
and  swallow  a  camel.'  "^ 

The  value  of  the  diffusion  of  this  social  per- 

1  "Sin  and  Societj',"  pp.  14,  15.  -  Ibid.,  pp.  29,  30. 


SOCIAL  SINNING  223 

spective  with  regard  to  wrongdoing  to  society 
may  be  measured  by  the  many  crimes  that  have 
been  recently  unearthed  in  our  American  cities 
and  in  some  of  the  State  Legislatures.  And  so 
long  as  we  are  capable  of  keeping  public  opinion 
focused  upon  these  opportunities  for  social  sin- 
ning we  may  hope  to  keep  dishonest  men  out  of 
city  government  and  State  Legislatures,  and  so 
long  may  we  hope  to  find  men  of  conscience  in 
every  fiduciary  relation  in  which  the  public  is 
concerned.  We  must  not  indorse  vice  of  any 
sort,  nor  slacken  in  the  least  our  condemnation 
of  wrongdoing  in  the  individual,  but  we  must 
place  more  emphasis  upon  the  necessity  for  a 
social  perspective  that  will  extend  our  vision 
to  the  remotest  recesses  of  society  where  the 
social  causes  of  evil  have  their  real  source. 

Let  us  take  a  concrete  example  of  social  sin- 
ning where  the  social  perspective  was  lacking, 
and  no  one  was  willfully  guilty  of  wrongdoing, 
though  the  results  were  disastrous.  In  one  of 
our  large  cities  in  the  State  of  New  York  there 
were  discovered  sixteen  cases  of  diphtheria 
along  the  route  of  one  milkman  who  lived  in 
the  country.  An  investigation  by  the  Board  of 
Health  revealed  the  fact  that  the  man  had  diph- 
theria of  the  nose.  Now,  he  claimed  that  a 
physician  had  examined  him  and  found  the  test 
for  the  disease  negative,  so  he  went  on  peddling 
milk  while  he  had  the  contagion.    A  proper  so- 


224  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

cial  perspective  would  have  made  him  as  cau- 
tious as  though  he  had  known  he  was  affected, 
and  the  same  would  have  made  the  examining 
physician  more  cautious  in  his  diagnosis.  The 
lack  of  it  made  these  sixteen  innocent  victims 
possible,  to  say  nothing  of  the  expense  and  care 
and  anxiety  inflicted  upon  the  whole  city. 

I  think  it  possible  in  all  our  educational  in- 
stitutions, both  in  the  cities  and  in  the  country, 
so  to  educate  the  masses  of  the  people  that  they 
may  be  able  to  discern  the  facts  of  social  sin 
and  be  cautious  to  avoid  it  themselves,  and 
keen  to  detect  it  in  others,  and  bold  to  prosecute 
evil-doers  wherever  discovered.  This  does  not 
mean  that  society  is  to  be  constantly  disturbed 
by  a  system  of  amateur  espionage,  but  it  means, 
rather,  the  development  of  a  wholesome  public 
opinion  that  will  insist  upon  social  morality. 
In  matters  of  individual  wrongdoing  there  is 
seldom  any  occasion  for  the  ordinary  citizen 
volunteering  information,  because  public  opin- 
ion is  organized  into  regular  processes  of  law, 
so  that  the  wrongdoer  is  apprehended  in  the  or- 
dinary way,  and  much  of  wrongdoing  is  pre- 
vented because  public  opinion  acts  as  a  deter- 
rent. Likewise,  when  we  have  developed  the 
social  consciousness  and  imagination  so  that 
people  generally  will  be  able  to  discern  the  char- 
acter of  social  sinning,  we  shall  have  fewer  oc- 
casions for  the  disturbed  conditions  of  society 


SOCIAL  SINNING  225 

because  of  the  punishment  of  boodlers  and 
grafters,  rebaters  and  embezzlers,  lobbyists  and 
promoters,  for  business  then  will  be  conducted 
on  an  honest  basis,  government  will  be  held  as  a 
sacred  trust,  and  all  these  forms  of  evil  will 
vanish  from  decent  society  because  the  light  of 
public  opinion  will  leave  no  dark  corners  for 
such  connivers  to  scheme  in.  To  quote  again 
from  Professor  Eoss:  ''Upon  the  practicers  of 
new  sins  there  is  no  longer  a  curb  unless  it  be 
public  censure.  So  the  question  of  the  hour  is, 
can  there  be  fashioned  out  of  popular  sentiment 
some  sort  of  buckler  for  society?  Can  our 
loathing  of  rascals  be  wrought  up  into  a  kind  of 
unembodied  government,  able  to  restrain  the 
men  that  derisively  snap  their  fingers  at  the 
agents  of  the  law?  That  the  public  scorn  really 
bites  into  wrongdoers  of  the  modern  type  may 
be  read  in  the  fate  of  the  insurance  gang.  .  .  . 
If  only  we  can  bring  it  to  bear,  the  respect  or 
scorn  of  the  many  is  still  an  immense  asset  of 
society  in  its  struggle  with  sinners."^ 

Society  May  Sin  Against  the  Individual 

Another  illustration  of  social  sinning  may 
be  given  where  the  society  itself  sins  against 
the  individual,  whether  consciously  or  uncon- 
sciously. Take,  for  example,  the  permission  of 
child  labor  in  factories,  when  we  know  its  evil 

»  "Sin  and  Society,"  pp.  75-77. 


226  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

effects  upon  the  vitality  of  the  workers  through 
the  statistics  of  death  and  sickness  in  such  com- 
munities; or,  again,  the  licensing  of  the  liquor 
trafiQc,  when  we  know  the  evil  results  to  homes 
and  individuals;  or  the  opium  trade  in  China, 
which  has  now  to  be  abolished,  thanks  to  public 
opinion,  world-wide.  Other  examj^les  are  the 
public  lottery  in  many  of  the  European  coun- 
tries, unjust  forms  of  taxation  and  tariffs,  all  of 
which  have  a  direct  demoralizing  effect  upon 
the  individuals  of  the  community,  and  jet  they 
are  permitted  to  exist  in  spite  of  their  evil 
effects. 

One  of  the  most  striking  evils  of  modern 
times  is  the  permission  of  great  concerns  to 
persist  in  employing  men  and  women  and  chil- 
dren without  being  compelled  to  provide  safety 
devices  against  accidents,  and  improved  sani- 
tary conditions  against  disease.  Take,  for  ex- 
ample, the  mine  disasters  due  to  incompetent 
inspection,  or  disregard  for  the  law  after  in- 
spection has  pointed  out  the  dangers  and  pre- 
scribed the  remedies;  railroad  accidents  at 
grade  crossings,  or  accidents  due  to  overworked 
engineers,  or  tower  men,  or  to  worn-out  rolling 
stock  and  inadequate  roadbed  inspection.  In 
many  such  cases  in  the  past  society  has  passed 
over  the  shock  by  referring  them  to  "inscru- 
table acts  of  Providence,"  when  the  public 
kpows   that   many   of   them  could  have   been 


SOCIAL  SINNING  227 

avoided  by  its  obedience-compelling  power  if 
put  in  operation  at  the  riglit  time. 

Again,  social  sin  may  he  committed  hy  one 
group  against  another  group,  one  community 
against  another.  If  one  man  takes  away  by 
force  another  man's  property,  we  brand  him  as 
a  robber  or  a  thief ;  and  yet  it  is  possible,  by  un- 
fair destructive  competition,  for  a  whole  com- 
munity living  in  peace  and  plenty  to  be  entirely 
deprived  of  its  economic  opportunity,  and  its 
whole  poi3ulation  be  left  to  drift  for  itself  in  the 
struggle  for  existence.  But  under  modern  con- 
ditions of  social  psychology  we  are  apt  to  con- 
done such  social  conduct  under  the  terms  of  the 
law  of  "the  survival  of  the  fittest."  Organized 
groups  in  industr}^  inaugurate  warfare  and  call 
to  their  aid  their  allies  through  the  plea  of 
sympathetic  interest,  and  the  community  at 
large  must  bear  the  brunt  of  the  expense  in  loss 
of  trade,  and  the  recouping  of  the  losses  of  the 
competing  groups  through  the  increased  cost  of 
their  products,  be  it  in  labor  or  goods. 

These  are  some  of  the  phases  of  social  sin- 
ning that  need  the  application  of  new  methods 
in  applying  the  principles  of  the  social  gospel. 
We  need  a  more  adequate  social  psychology 
in  order  to  understand  the  personality  of  the 
social  group  and  in  organizing  and  making 
effective  the  social  consciousness  in  definite 
forms  of  social  control. 


228  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER      • 

Social  Salvation 

As  I  stated  above,  one  of  the  chief  reasons 
whj^  many  people  cannot  see  the  importance 
of  social  salvation  is  because  they  have  been 
accustomed  to  look  upon  salvation  as  a  finished 
product  or  as  a  specific  act  rather  than  as  a 
process  in  which  many  factors  are  involved, 
none  of  more  importance  than  the  social. 

The  Social  Factors  ikt  Salvation 

It  is  well  for  us  to  understand  the  importance 
of  the  social  factors  in  the  process  of  salvation 
if  we  are  going  to  get  men  and  women  to  put 
forth  their  best  efforts  in  church  and  Sunday 
school  work,  and  maintain  the  efficiency  of  re- 
ligious education  in  the  family  as  well  as  in  the 
Church.  Take,  for  example,  the  salvation  of  a 
large  family  of  nine  children  during  the  active 
life  of  a  noble  woman  whose  husband  died  when 
the  youngest  was  but  an  infant  in  arms.  Now, 
if  you  ask  each  of  these  nine  children,  now 
grown  up  and  actively  engaged  in  the  ordinary 
tasks  of  life,  what  were  the  chief  factors  in  their 
salvation,  they  would  each  have  a  somewhat  dif- 
ferent answer  to  give.  Among  those  named 
would  be,  ''Mother's  prayers,"  "The  ties  of 
home  life,"  "Family  worship,"  "Early  train- 
ing in  Sunday  school,"  "The  influence  of  my 
teacher,"  "The  sympathy  of  my  pastor  at  the 


SOCIAL  SALVATION  229 

time  of  my  conviction,"  "The  standards  of 
morals  in  the  community  where  I  was  brought 
up, "  *  *  The  work  of  the  Holy  Spirit  in  my  heart 
as  I  read  God's  Word  and  meditated  upon  the 
realities  of  life  and  death.'*  These  and  many 
others  would  likely  be  named,  and  yet  no  one 
would  say  that  these  were  all  the  factors  in  the 
process.  But  I  think  we  will  all  conclude,  after 
a  little  thought,  that  the  important  thing  for  our 
day  is  to  keep  each  worker  or  group  of  workers 
keyed  up  to  the  importance  of  carrying  on  well 
his  part  of  the  process.  That  mother's  simple 
life  of  prayer  and  work  for  her  children,  with 
little  talk  and  much  deed,  may  seem  of  little 
consequence  to  him  who  lacks  imagination  and 
the  social  consciousness  in  the  construction  of 
his  religious  program.  The  loyalty  and  devo- 
tion of  a  Sunday  school  teacher  through  the 
most  critical  period  of  adolescence  may  mean 
but  little  to  the  man  whom  God  has  used  suc- 
cessfully in  revival  efforts  with  the  crowds  of 
adults  gathered  from  the  byways  of  sin,  but 
every  intelligent  religious  worker  knows  full 
well  that,  could  we  meet  every  known  social 
need  of  the  adolescent  youth  in  society  to-day 
by  a  graded  system  of  social  organization,  the 
work  of  the  evangelist  with  the  crowd  would  be 
as  impossible  as  it  would  be  unnecessary;  and 
yet  as  society  is  now  constructed,  and  because 
of  the  social  sins  now  permitted  that  make  it 


230  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

necessary  for  the  "way  to  destruction"  to  be 
"broad"  in  order  to  accommodate  the  crowd, 
the  work  of  the  evangelist  is  a  very  important 
factor  in  the  process  of  salvation  for  the  many. 

The  first  important  factor  in  the  process  that 
I  would  emphasize  is  that  of  the  sense  of  social 
need  in  consciousness,  or,  in  other  words,  there 
must  be  in  the  mind  of  the  individual  and  of  the 
group  a  motive  for  the  organization  of  the 
social  factors  in  salvation.  Let  me  illustrate: 
in  this  country  there  has  been  the  ever-widening 
influence  of  the  idea  that  there  is  no  sense  or 
reason  or  justice  in  permitting  the  exploitation 
of  the  labor  and  life  of  children,  and  as  a  result 
of  this  consciousness  in  the  minds  of  the  many 
we  have  begun  to  marshal  certain  social  forces 
in  what  may  be  termed  child-saving  institu- 
tions, and  the  conservation  of  human  resources 
in  child  life.  This  motive  for  social  organiza- 
tion is  becoming  so  strong  in  the  nation  that  we 
may  hope  soon  to  see  it  result  in  a  National 
Bureau  for  the  Conservation  of  Child  Life.  In 
other  words,  whenever  the  public  discovers  a 
new  form  of  social  sinning  against  the  child  life 
of  our  age,  at  that  point  it  develops  a  new  form 
of  social  organization  to  save  the  child.  An- 
other illustration  is  to  be  found  in  the  temper- 
ance movement.  So  long  as  people  believed 
that  intemperance  was  only  a  personal  vice  the 
methods  of  temperance  were  that  of  signing  the 


SOCIAL  SALVATION  231 

pledge  or  tlie  promising  of  the  individual  to 
give  up  his  cups ;  but  when  people  began  to  see 
the  organized  character  of  the  liquor  traffic, 
they  began  to  see  the  necessity  for  the  organiza- 
tion of  temperance  societies,  Prohibition  par- 
ties, Anti-Saloon  Leagues,  and  State-wide  move- 
ments to  control  the  evil  of  the  saloon.  And 
wherever  the  evil  takes  on  a  new  form  of  attack 
there  the  temperance  movement  must  make  a 
counter  organized  attack  on  the  traffic. 

Gambling  furnishes  another  illustration  of 
this  factor  of  the  need  being  felt  in  the  con- 
sciousness of  the  group.  When  it  became 
known  to  the  different  States  and  to  the  nation 
at  large  that  gambling  was  an  evil  to  society 
as  a  whole,  and  not  merely  an  individual  vice, 
the  different  State  Legislatures  proceeded  to 
legislate  against  the  evil,  and  ultimately  the  na- 
tion acted  as  a  whole,  as  in  the  matter  of 
lottery. 

So  for  slavery,  and  the  emancipation  move- 
ment that  followed;  so  with  the  current  move- 
ment in  the  State  and  national  legislative  bodies 
against  the  so-called  ' '  white-slave  traffic. '  *  The 
consciousness  of  insurance  frauds  led  to  State 
control  of  all  insurance  companies.  The  knowl- 
edge of  the  evils  of  rebating  and  other  evils, 
such  as  stock-watering,  accidents,  etc.,  in  public 
service  corporations  and  other  public  utilities, 
led  to  the  bringing  of  them  under  the  authority 


232  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

of  an  obedience-compelling  power,  so  that  these 
evils  might,  so  far  as  possible,  be  eliminated. 

As  in  the  case  of  individual  salvation,  in  the 
popular  sense,  a  sense  of  need  precedes  an  ef- 
fective salvation,  so  for  society  the  fundamen- 
tal need  in  social  salvation  is  the  development 
of  the  social  consciousness  and  imagination  to 
see  the  need  for  organized  movements  for  the 
salvation  of  the  community,  the  State,  the  na- 
tion, and  humanity  as  a  whole. 

Professor  Ross  has  well  pointed  out  the  need 
for  an  awakened  consciousness  of  new  forms  of 
sin  in  the  progress  of  human  society  when  he 
makes  a  distinction  between  vice  and  sin,  and 
shows  how  the  one  tends  to  destroy  the  person 
indulging,  and  the  other  to  make  fat  the  sinner 
while  others  are  destroyed  as  the  victims.  Our 
task  is  to  distinguish  in  consciousness  the  new 
forms  of  sin  and  direct  our  forces  against  them 
as  well  as  against  the  vices  of  men.  To  quote : 
'  *  By  vice  we  mean  practices  that  harm  oneself ; 
by  sin  we  mean  conduct  that  harms  another. 
They  spring  from  different  roots  and  call  for 
different  treatment.  Sin  grows  largely  out  of 
the  relations  into  which  men  enter,  and  hence 
social  development,  by  constantly  opening  new 
doors  to  wrongdoing,  calls  into  being  new 
species  of  sin.  Crude  law  recognizes  three 
kinds  of  stealing,  developed  law  ten  kinds,  the 
law  of  to-day  seventeen  kinds.    By  the  time  it 


SOCIAL  SALVATION  233 

is  abreast  of  our  present  needs  it  will  discrimi- 
nate, perhaps,  thirty  kinds.  The  same  is  true 
of  other  types  of  wrongdoing."^  If  it  be  true 
that  sin  changes  its  form  as  society  develops 
and  men  are  thrown  into  new  relation  to  each 
other,  then  our  first  task  in  social  salvation  is 
to  keep  the  social  consciousness  of  men  awake 
to  the  changing  social  needs.  This  should  cer- 
tainly be  a  part  of  the  educational  program  of 
the  Church. 

A  second  factor  in  social  salvation  is  social 
movement  or  organized  effort  in  order  to  save 
the  sinned  against,  as  well  as  the  sinner.  It  is 
a  fact  worthy  of  note  that  most  of  the  organized 
movements  in  modern  times  in  the  interests  of 
society  have  been  directed  toward  the  victims 
rather  than  toward  the  sinner  himself  in  high 
places.  Take,  for  example,  the  movement  for 
pure-food  inspection  and  labeling.  It  has  been 
in  the  interests  of  the  potential  victims  of 
*' embalmed"  beef  and  poisonous  drugs  in  adul- 
terations rather  than  for  the  reform  of  the 
dealers  that  the  pure-food  legislation  has  been 
brought  about;  so  for  all  the  organized  efforts 
for  public  welfare,  the  note  of  emphasis  has 
been  toward  the  saving  of  society,  and  not 
merely  the  reform  of  the  sinner  against  society. 
**For  the  man  who  is  the  prey  of  the  evil  in- 
clinations of  others  surely  has  a  better  claim 

»See  "Sin  and  Society,"  pp.  90,  91. 


234  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

on  us  than  the  man  who  is  the  prey  of  his  own 
evil  inclinations."^  But  it  must  be  conceded 
here  that  the  evils  that  result  to  others  from 
the  conduct  of  certain  forms  of  business  enter- 
prise are  not  always  the  result  of  evil  intent; 
they  are  in  most  cases  the  by-products  of  activi- 
ties that  are  otherwise  willed.  For  example, 
accidents  in  industry,  and  especially  in  those 
forms  where  there  is  always  a  large  margin  of 
danger.  Now,  the  public  interest  is  usually 
directed  toward  the  safety  of  the  potential 
victims,  and  it  must  not  be  said  that  all  men 
engaged  in  industries  where  accidents  occur 
are  sinners  against  society.  But  it  must  be 
recognized  as  true  in  many  cases  that,  for  the 
sake  of  paying  dividends,  or  to  avoid  in- 
creased financial  obligations,  conditions  are  al- 
lowed to  go  beyond  the  danger  point,  and  acci- 
dents result  that  might  have  been  avoided.  It 
is  just  here  that  social  movement  in  modern 
times  involves  the  cooperation  of  the  many,  in 
an  indirect  way,  to  the  increased  cost  to  the 
public  of  having  things  done  in  the  right  way, 
for  the  safety  and  welfare  of  the  people  in  gen- 
eral. So  in  our  religious  activity  for  the  salva- 
tion of  the  community;  we  are  beginning  in 
modern  times  to  put  more  emphasis  upon  social 
movements  for  the  saving  of  those  who  are 
sinned  against  than  in  former  times.    We  are 

1  Professor  Ross,  Ibid.,  p.  94. 


SOCIAL  SALVATION  235 

organizing  activities  counter  to  those  that  are 
causal  to  the  lapses  of  many  from  the  Church. 

This  brings  us  to  a  third  factor  in  social  sal- 
vation, namely,  preventive  measures  in  the  con- 
servation of  results.  Men  in  public  life  have 
discovered  in  recent  years  that  it  does  not  avail 
merely  to  pass  reform  legislation,  but  that  there 
must  be  adequate  means  provided  to  carry  out 
reform  measures  by  preventing  a  recurrence  of 
the  old  conditions  that  caused  the  evils  in  the 
first  place.  So  in  our  religious  work  of  to-day, 
we  are  coming  to  see  more  and  more  the  im- 
portance of  conserving  the  resources  we  already 
have,  and  in  preventing  the  people  from  being 
enticed  into  a  life  of  sin  after  the  Church  has 
put  its  stamp  upon  them. 

What  Can  the  Church  Do? 

What  active  measures  can  the  Church  under- 
take to  promote  social  salvation?  In  the  case 
of  our  city  governments,  it  seems  a  pity  and  a 
shame  to  our  democracy  that  cases  of  boodling, 
such  as  have  been  brought  to  light  in  recent 
years,  should  ever  have  been  possible;  that 
graft  in  our  legislative  halls  of  some  of  the 
great  States  in  the  Union  should  have  become 
so  flagrant  seems  inconceivable  when  we  con- 
sider the  activity  of  the  Christian  denomina- 
tions in  these  centers  of  population.  Is  it  not 
quite  true  that  we  should  undertake  a  more 


236  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

aggressive  policy  of  moral  education  in  our 
homes,  local  church  communities,  and  in  the  re- 
ligious press  that  will  bring  the  light  to  bear 
upon  these  secret  places  of  wrongdoing,  and  see 
to  it  that  men  who  are  unimpeachable  be  sent 
to  our  legislative  halls  and  into  the  board  rooms 
of  our  city  governments?  Can  we  not  also 
create  a  stronger  sentiment  in  favor  of  a  more 
aggressive  policy  of  moral  education  in  our 
public  schools,  not  only  in  the  content  of  the 
curricula  of  the  schools,  but  also  in  the  conduct 
of  the  boards  of  education  in  many  places  in  the 
choosing  of  teachers  who  take  their  profession 
seriously,  and  see  to  it  that  they  are  paid  suffi- 
cient salary  to  make  teaching  a  serious  lifework 
instead  of  a  makeshift  until  they  can  get  some- 
thing better? 

Again,  the  Church  can  do  much  toward  the 
saving  of  society  by  encouraging  men  to  under- 
take civic  tasks  from  the  viewpoint  of  express- 
ing true  Christian  motive.  Shall  we  not  insist 
on  these  various  forms  of  Christian  activity 
rather  than  try  to  fashion  all  men  into  a  few 
molds  of  Christian  experience  and  work  within 
the  narrower  limits  of  the  church  services,  con- 
ducted largely  within  the  building! 

Within  recent  years  wealthy  philanthropists 
have  proposed  to  establish  foundations  with  the 
endowment  of  millions,  for  the  carrying  on  of 
various  forms  of  enterprise  for  the  betterment 


SOCIAL  SALVATION  237 

of  human  society.  Who  are  to  be  the  men  and 
women,  apart  from  the  men  and  women  of  high 
character  already  named  as  the  trustees,  to 
carry  on  the  practical  work  that  these  great 
foundations  represent?  I  feel  quite  sure  that 
they  will  be  men  and  women  of  high  ideals  and 
pure  motives  for  the  welfare  of  society,  and  it 
would  be  quite  a  cause  for  regret  if  our  churches 
should  not  be  largely  represented,  not  by  rea- 
son of  the  denominational  name  they  bear,  but, 
rather,  by  virtue  of  the  character  they  have  won 
through  that  intellectual  and  heart  grasp  they 
have  made  of  the  ideals  and  lifework  of  Him, 
who,  **  though  he  was  rich,  yet  for  our  sakes 
became  poor,  that  we  through  his  poverty  might 
become  rich,"  and  who  had  such  a  high  con- 
ception of  what  his  disciples  should  contribute 
to  the  salvation  of  human  society  that  he  said 
to  them  and  of  them,  *'Ye  are  the  light  of  the 
world,"  '^Ye  are  the  salt  of  the  earth."  Let  us 
see  to  it  that  we  send  out  men  and  women  into 
every  legitimate  activity  of  society  who  shall 
bear  the  light  of  truth,  and  contain  within  them- 
selves that  preservative  quality  that  shall  make 
and  keep  society  pure. 


CHAPTER  XX 

THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  WORKINGMANi 

In  discussing  a  subject  like  this  upon  which 
so  much  has  been  said  and  written,  it  is  well 
for  us  not  to  enter  into  a  dissertation  concern- 
ing the  differences  of  viewpoint  of  the  Church 
and  labor,  but  rather  to  proceed  to  find  out  in 
how  many  points  the  two  are  in  practical  agree- 
ment, and  where  they  do  not  agree,  to  earnestly 
search  for  the  reasons  for  disagreement  and 
frankly  state  these  for  the  benefit  of  society, 
rather  than  keep  silent  for  the  sake  of  some- 
body's feelings;  for  my  experience  with  work- 
ingmen  has  shown  me  that,  as  a  class,  they  are 
fair-minded  in  discussion  and  welcome  nothing 
so  eagerly  as  they  do  frankness  in  stating  the 
facts  one  has  to  present.  The  Church  should 
be  as  eager  to  hear  the  laboring  man's  state- 
ment of  his  case. 

The  subject  implies  two  socially  organized 
groups  of  men,  not  necessarily  exclusive  of 
each  other,  each  having  a  different  class  con- 
sciousness and  a  separate  organized  existence 


1  For  a  fuller  discussion  of  the  subject,  "The  Church  and  Labor," 
I  refer  the  reader  to  my  article  published  in  Chapter  IV  of  "The 
Socialized  Church,"  by  Tippy. 

238 


CHURCH  AND  WORKINGMAN  239 

in  society.  The  subject  implies  also  that  there 
is  being  developed  as  never  before  an  under- 
standing between  the  Church  and  workinginen 
of  mutual  interests  which  is  ushering  in  a  better 
social  order  in  which  there  are  to  be  estab- 
lished righteousness,  peace,  and  pleasurable 
association  among  all  the  legitimate  groupings 
of  human  population.  In  fact,  when  we  come 
to  study  the  two  great  movements  represented 
by  the  Church  and  by  labor,  they  have  many 
aspects  in  common.  Though  the  Church  is 
made  up  of  many  denominations,  some  highly 
and  others  loosely  organized,  some  peacefully 
disposed  toward  others,  while  some  are  selfish 
and  opposed  to  all  others,  yet  we  think  of  the 
Church  as  one  great  movement  founded  by 
Christ  Jesus,  and  we  look  for  the  consummation 
of  the  ultimate  union  of  all  true  believers 
in  true  fellowship  represented  by  the  conception 
of  the  kingdom  of  God  on  earth. 

Likewise  the  labor  movement  is  represented 
by  many  class-conscious  groups  and  organized 
sections,  some  with  a  strong  central  union 
control,  others  without  any  visible  union  con- 
trol, others  without  any  visible  form  of  union 
save  the  union  of  a  common  struggle  for, 
and  interest  in,  life.  Yet  we  can  and  do  speak 
of  all  these  groups  as  representing  one  great 
movement  of  the  workers  of  the  world  based 
upon   the   struggle   against  poverty,   and   the 


240  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

passion  for  social  justice,  and  having  for  its 
ultimate  goal  a  social  state  where  every  man 
shall  have  a  chance  to  work,  and  every  man 
shall  receive  his  just  share  of  the  profits  of 
productive  toil  as  he  has  need. 

In  our  definition  of  the  Church  I  am  sure  all 
have  a  Weltanschauung  that  is  broader  than 
the  bounds  of  our  own  denomination,  world- 
wide as  it  may  be,  but  our  definition  includes  all 
the  organized  forces  of  the  Christian  Name  that 
are  engaged  in  the  serious  task  of  extending  on 
earth  that  noblest  expression  of  organized  so- 
ciety we  call  the  kingdom  of  God.  So  in  our 
definition  of  the  labor  movement,  I  am  sure  we 
should  have  a  Weltanschauung  that  is  broader 
than  the  stretches  of  any  one  federative  move- 
ment of  organized  labor,  or  any  socialist-po- 
litical propaganda,  and  includes  all  who  are 
engaged  in  the  serious  struggles  against  the 
wrongs  of  greed,  and  graft,  and  political  cor- 
ruption, centered  in  the  exploitation  of  human 
labor  for  personal  and  selfish  gain,  and  in  the 
endeavor  to  establish  that  kind  of  a  democracy 
through  social  control  that  shall  make  the 
Golden  Rule  the  basis  of  social  justice. 

Now,  we  must  admit  that  there  are  many 
facts  to  be  observed  in  the  present  as  well  as  in 
the  history  of  the  Church  to  mar  our  definition 
and  even  to  lead  us  to  question  its  validity. 
Likewise  there  are  many  manifestations  in  the 


CHURCH  AND  WORKINGMAN  241 

industrial  order  that  would  lead  us  to  question 
the  truthfulness  of  our  definition  of  the  labor 
movement.  Notwithstanding  the  facts  of  re- 
ligious wars,  factional  strife,  religious  bigotry, 
and  intolerance,  and  notwithstanding  strikes, 
boycotts,  lockouts,  struggles  between  organized 
and  unorganized  labor,  the  ''open"  and  the 
''closed"  shop.  Socialist  party  and  Labor  partj^ 
yet  we  are  using  a  new  vocabulary  with  respect 
to  both  of  these  organized  bodies.  "The  Fed- 
eration of  the  Churches,"  "The  Federation  of 
Labor,"  "Church  Unity,"  "The  Brotherhood 
of  Man,"  "The  Socialized  Church,"  "The 
Temple  of  Labor,"  etc. — all  these  indicate  the 
trend  of  modem  life  toward  the  realization  of 
the  facts  contained  in  the  definition  both  for  the 
Church  and  the  labor  movement. 

The  Church's  Present  Attitude  toward  the 
Labor  Movement 

While  the  Church  has  always  been  interested 
in  the  laboring  man,  it  has  not  until  recent  years 
given  serious  study  to  the  subject  of  the  work- 
ingman  as  a  movement.  It  can  be  said  now, 
however,  that  the  Church's  serious  study  of  the 
labor  movement  has  led  the  leading  denomina- 
tions in  this  country  to  take  some  definite  action 
toward  the  solution  of  the  labor  problem.  For 
illustration:  the  Protestant  Episcopal  Church 
has  for  many  years  maintained  an  organization 


242  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

known  as  the  Church  Association  for  Improv- 
ing the  Condition  of  Labor,  and  at  its  national 
Conference  some  years  ago  said,  among  other 
things:  "We  are  convinced  that  the  organiza- 
tion of  labor  is  essential  to  the  well-being  of 
the  working  people.  Its  purpose  is  to  maintain 
such  a  standard  of  wages,  hours,  and  conditions 
as  shall  afford  every  man  an  opportunity  to 
gain  in  mind  and  heart.  Without  organiza- 
tion this  standard  cannot  be  maintained  in 
the  midst  of  our  present  commercial  con- 
ditions."^ 

The  Presbyterian  Church  has  established  a 
Department  of  Church  and  Labor  in  its  Home 
Mission  Board,  and  under  the  efficient  leader- 
ship of  Mr.  Charles  Stelzle  has  recently  estab- 
lished in  New  York  a  "Temple  of  Labor,'* 
which  shall  be  devoted  to  the  ministry  of  the 
gospel  of  Christ  to  the  working  men  of  New 
York. 

The  Congregational  Church  has  placed  itself 
on  record  thus:  "We  urge  our  Church  to  take 
a  deeper  interest  in  the  labor  question,  and  to 
get  a  more  intelligent  understanding  of  the 
aims  of  organized  labor.  "^ 

The  Methodist  Episcopal  Church,  while 
known  from  the  beginning  as  "The  Poor 
Man's  Church,"  interested  in  the  workers  of 


1  See  Charles  StelzU^   in  "Encyclopsedia  of  Social  Reform,"   by 
Bliss,  p.  222.  2  See  Ibid.,  p.  223. 


CHUKCII  AND  WOEKINGMAN  243 

the  world,  yet  at  the  last  General  Conference 
(1908)  placed  upon  record  in  the  Episcopal  Ad- 
dress its  interest  in  the  just  aspirations  of  the 
labor  movement  in  terms  like  these :  * '  We  recog- 
nize that  the  fundamental  purposes  of  the  labor 
movement  are  essentially  ethical,  and  there- 
fore should  command  the  support  of  Christian 
men.  We  recognize,  further,  that  the  organiza- 
tion of  labor  is  not  only  the  right  of  the  laborers, 
and  conducive  to  their  welfare,  but  is  inciden- 
tally of  great  benefit  to  society  at  large  in  the 
securing  of  better  conditions  of  work  and  life, 
in  its  educational  influence  upon  the  great 
multitudes  concerned,  and  particularly  in 
the  Americanization  of  our  immigrant  popu- 
lation. ' ' 

The  Young  Men's  Christian  Association  has 
for  many  years  given  special  attention  to  labor- 
ing men  in  railroad  and  shop  work,  conducting 
meetings  and  classes  for  the  betterment  of  the 
physical,  intellectual,  social,  and  spiritual  life 
of  the  men. 

Some  of  the  denominations  have  inaugurated 
a  custom  of  appointing  fraternal  delegates  to 
the  Central  Labor  Union  of  each  district  to  con- 
fer with  laboring  men  upon  subjects  of  vital 
interest  to  the  community,  such  as  the  saloon, 
gambling,  the  social  evil,  Sunday  work,  child 
labor,  sanitary  conditions  in  tenements  and  fac- 
tories, and  everything  else  that  influences  the 


244  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

moral  life  of  the  commuiiity.*  Another  expres- 
sion of  the  Church's  attitude  toward  the  labor 
movement  is  to  be  found  in  the  statement  pre- 
sented to  the  Federal  Council  of  the  Churches 
of  Christ  in  America  by  the  Committee  on  the 
Church  and  Modern  Industry,  of  which  Rev. 
Frank  Mason  North,  D.D.,  was  chairman  and 
wrote  the  report.^ 

Notwithstanding  all  this  splendid  record  of 
the  expression  of  the  Church's  attitude  toward 
the  labor  movement,  we  are  all  conscious  of  a 
widespread  opinion  that  the  Church  as  a  whole 
is  not  doing  what  it  might  reasonably  be  ex- 
pected to  do  for  the  betterment  of  the  conditions 
of  living  among  the  workingmen  of  the  world. 
"We  should  not  fear  or  decry  the  power  of 
organization  and  of  the  social  consciousness 
among  workingmen,  but  we  should,  rather, 
make  it  our  business  to  give  direction  to  the 
labor  movement  by  the  principles  of  the  gospel 
in  channels  of  usefulness  to  society,  and  not 
allow  it  to  go  unrestrained  in  any  quarter  until 
it  becomes  destructive  of  moral  order. 

How  Can  the  Chukch  Help  the  Labor 
Movement? 

Believing  that  the  labor  movement  is  at  heart 
a  righteous  movement  for  the  ultimate  better- 

1  See  Charles  Stelzle,  in  "Encyclopsedia  of  Social  Reform,"  by 
Bliss,  p.  223. 

2  See  the  "Christian  City,"  for  December,  1908. 


CHUKCH  AND  WOEKINGMAN  245 

ment  of  society  at  large,  the  Church  can  aid  in 
this  movement  as  a  whole  and  diffuse  its  knowl- 
edge throughout  the  masses  of  the  people 
touched  by  its  leaders  through  the  Sunday 
school,  the  public  services,  the  pulpit,  schools, 
and  religious  press.  If  we  expect  the  sympathy 
of  the  labor  movement,  we  owe  it  to  the  working- 
men  to  treat  their  cause  in  an  intelligent  way; 
and  if  we  expect  to  help  them,  we  must  diagnose 
their  case  before  prescribing  for  their  needs. 
This  will  enable  the  Church  to  be  impartial  in 
its  judgments  of  the  contentions  between  or- 
ganized employers  and  their  employees.  The 
Church  can  also  give  to  the  labor  movement 
active  cooperation  in  the  endeavor  to  correct 
abuses  and  social  wrongs,  such  as  child  labor, 
unfair  competition  with  woman  labor,  Sunday 
work  that  is  unnecessarj^  unsanitary  conditions 
of  places  of  work,  and  residence  in  tenements, 
unfair  distribution  of  profits  in  industry,  the 
evils  of  gambling  and  graft. 

The  Church  should  greatly  assist  the  labor 
movement  also  by  promoting  the  moralization 
of  the  employers.  While  it  is  true  that  many 
of  the  captains  of  industry  are  noble  Christian 
men,  and  have  a  brotherly  sympathy  for  their 
employees,  yet  it  is  true  that  some  of  them  have 
been  shown  up  in  recent  investigations  by  va- 
rious commissions  and  legislative  committees 
to  be  men  of  barbaric  notions  of  ethics,  and 


246  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

many  of  them  liave  been  found  guilty  of  con- 
duct contrary  to  the  laws  of  the  State  as  well 
as  the  Decalogue  and  the  Golden  Rule.  We 
can  never  hope  to  see  the  labor  unions  working 
overtime  on  the  Golden  Rule  until  we  get  em- 
ployers converted  to  the  principles  of  industrial 
altruism. 

The  Church  can  also  assist  the  labor  move- 
ment in  the  socialization  of  workingmen.  In 
the  study  of  industrial  psychology  we  find  that 
the  workingmen  while  at  their  toil  in  many  lines 
of  industry  have  less  chance  to-day  than  for- 
merly under  machine  labor  to  develop  person- 
ality and  to  broaden  their  social  horizon.  The 
Church  has  the  socializing  agencies  to  do  this 
for  them  better  even  than  the  labor  unions, 
for  they  (the  unions)  are  class-conscious  and  in 
most  cases,  so  far  as  their  class  is  concerned, 
selfish,  while  the  Church,  on  the  other  hand,  is 
conscious  of  a  world-kingdom  of  righteousness, 
peace,  and  joy,  and,  in  most  cases  at  least,  is 
hopefully  altruistic. 

There  will  be  no  return  to  the  former  meth- 
ods of  industry,  where  employer  and  worker 
will  be  on  a  common  plane  and  in  social  inter- 
course. The  machine,  the  corporations,  and 
the  trust  are  here,  and  even  larger  combina- 
tions of  capital  and  more  extensive  divisions  of 
labor  are  to  be  inaugurated.  What  we  need  to 
do  as  a  Church  is  to  socialize  the  consciousness 


CHURCH  AND  WORKINGMAN  247 

of  both  groups  into  a  synthesis  of  the  universal 
social  order.  The  Church  can  do  this  if  it 
will,  because  every  Christian  member  of  a  labor 
union  is  a  point  of  contact  between  the  Church 
and  the  changing  social  order,  and  forms  a  re- 
ligious imitation  center  for  the  spread  of  the 
Christian  social  ideal  until  a  Christian  democ- 
racy is  established. 

The  Church  can  help  the  labor  movement  by 
revising  its  own  notions  of  sin  and  salvation. 
We  have,  somehow,  given  the  impression  that 
we  are  more  interested  in  the  workingman's 
personal  vices — ^sins  which  harm  himself — than 
we  are  in  the  sins  of  those  that  harm  the  work- 
ingman.  Conduct  that  harms  others  should  be 
looked  upon  with  greater  hatred  than  conduct 
that  harms  oneself.  The  man  who  peddles 
diseased  milk  that  destroys  the  workingman's 
babies  is  about  as  big  a  sinner  as  the  man  who 
has  the  cigarette  habit,  or  indulges  in  social 
vice,  or  bets  at  the  races ;  both  forms  of  conduct 
should  be  equally  denounced  by  the  Church. 
We  must  get  it  clear  in  our  Christian  conscious- 
ness that  it  is  as  pleasing  to  God  to  help  a 
group  of  men  by  regenerating  their  environ- 
ment as  it  is  to  redeem  them  from  the  slums  of 
vice  and  crime.  Unless  the  Church  makes  as 
strong  an  effort  to  better  the  conditions  of  the 
workingmen  as  it  does  to  get  them  into  the 
Church,  she  must  not  blame  the  workingman 


248  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

for  having  some  suspicions  as  to  the  motives 
which  prompt  her  activities. 

The  Church  can  help  the  labor  movement  by 
furnishing  and  equipping  intelligent  leadership 
in  social  reform — men  who  are  strong  enough 
and  bold  enough  to  take  sides  in  an  industrial 
dispute  when  the  cause  is  just.  This  idea  of 
leadership  may  be  illustrated  by  the  life  of 
Pastor  Stoker,  of  Berlin,  who,  in  a  speech  in  the 
German  Reichstag  on  child  and  female  labor, 
said:  *'We  have  stated  the  question  the  wrong 
way.  We  have  asked,  'How  much  child  and 
female  labor  does  industry  need  in  order  to 
flourish,  to  pay  dividends,  and  to  sell  goods 
abroad ! '  whereas  we  ought  to  have  asked, '  How 
ought  industry  to  be  organized  in  order  to  pro- 
tect and  foster  the  family,  the  human  indi- 
vidual, and  the  Christian  life?'  "^ 

Finally,  the  Church  can  help  the  labor  move- 
ment by  showing  the  spirit  of  brotherly  sym- 
pathy, and  a  heart  interest  in  the  workingman, 
like  that  of  the  Carpenter  of  Galilee,  who  said : 
**Come  unto  me,  all  ye  that  labor  and  are  heavy 
laden,  and  I  will  give  you  rest.  Take  my  yoke 
upon  you,  and  learn  of  me ;  for  I  am  meek  and 
lowly  in  heart :  and  ye  shall  find  rest  unto  your 
souls."  The  Church  must  teach  men,  as  he  did, 
how  to  find  rest  in  labor  and  not  rest  from  labor. 


» Quoted    by   Rauschenbusch,    in    "Christianity    and    the    Social 
Crisis." 


CHURCH  AND  WORKINGMAN  249 

What  Can  the  Labor  Movement  Do  to  Help 
THE  Church? 

The  time  will  come  when  by  mutual  under- 
standing of  their  beneficent  aims  for  society 
the  splendid  organized  energies  of  the  labor 
movement  will  be  coupled  with  the  organized 
energies  of  the  Church  in  its  fight  against  all 
the  sins  and  vices  of  society  that  are  the  com- 
mon enemies  of  both  in  their  struggle  for  social 
justice,  righteousness,  and  permanent  indus- 
trial peace.  I  expect  to  see  the  day  when  the 
labor  movement  will  employ  the  successful 
methods  used  against  organized  greed  (the 
strike,  the  boycott,  and  picketing),  against  or- 
ganized vice,  the  ''white-slave  traffic,"  the  sa- 
loon, gambling,  degrading  amusements,  and 
debasing  literature;  against  the  tramp  habit, 
pauperism,  unsanitary  tenements,  impure  food, 
tuberculosis,  and  other  social  diseases.  Also  I 
hope  soon  to  see  the  time  when  the  Church  and 
labor  shall  stand  together  in  a  statesmanlike 
way  until  the  appalling  budget  of  accidents  in 
industry  in  this  country  shall  be  materially  re- 
duced, and  those  still  remaining,  adequately 
compensated  for  by  all  the  responsible  indus- 
trial factors  causal  thereto. 

Space  will  not  permit  of  the  statement  of 
other  lines  of  social  activity  in  which  the  labor 
movement  can  aid  the  Church,  nor  to  give  a 


250  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

resume  of  the  splendid  work  already  achieved 
for  social  uplift  of  the  masses  by  the  organiza- 
tions of  labor.  Let  us  hope  that  all  organiza- 
tions for  the  uplift  of  men  may  so  work 
together  that  the  social  regime  to  be  reached 
may  not  injure  or  destroy  those  other  essential 
factors  of  social  organization  that  in  largest 
measure  make  work  for  most  of  us  possible. 


CHAPTER  XXI 

THE  SOCIAL  SETTLEMENT 

It  is  fitting  that  we  follow  up  our  discussions 
of  *' Preventive  Salvation"  and  "Social  Salva- 
tion" by  a  chapter  on  the  social  settlement, 
which  embodies  in  its  methods  of  work  so  much 
that  is  preventive  of  evil  to  the  community,  and 
endeavors  through  social  direction  to  lift  the 
entire  community  to  a  better  social  status. 

It  will  not  be  necessary  for  me  to  give  a  his- 
tor}^  of  the  social  settlement  movement  from 
the  days  of  Arnold  Toynbee  (1875-1883)  to  the 
present,  when  the  number  of  settlements  has 
reached  about  three  hundred  in  the  world,  more 
than  two  hundred  of  which  are  located  within 
the  United  States  of  America;  for  a  reference 
to  '^Bliss's  Encyclopedia  of  Social  Reform,"  or 
to  Miss  MacDowell's  interesting  article  on 
''The  Value  of  the  Social  Settlement,"  in  ''The 
Socialized  Church"  (Tippy),  will  give  the 
reader  an  excellent  account  of  the  history  of 
this  great  movement.^  We  wish  simply  to  con- 
sider the  essential  features  embodied  in  the 
social- settlement  idea  which  may  be  of  value  in 
the  work  of  educating  and  saving  the  people  of 

1  See  also  Jane  Addams,  "Twenty  Years  at  Hull  House." 
251 


262  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

any  community  that  require  such  methods  of 
social  engineering. 

Caerying  the  Chuech  to  the  People 

In  the  first  place,  so  far  as  the  Church  is  con- 
cerned, it  represents  not  the  idea  so  often  em- 
phasized in  Christian  activity,  the  bringing  of 
the  people  to  the  Church,  but  rather  the  idea 
that  needs  to  be  emphasized  more  and  more 
these  days — the  taking  of  the  Church  to  the 
people.  Where  this  is  done  in  the  spirit  of  true 
discipleship,  the  churching  of  the  people  follows 
as  a  natural  result.  The  social  settlement  is  de- 
fined by  Miss  Woolfolk  as  "homes  in  the  poorer 
quarters  of  the  city  where  educated  men  and 
women  may  live  in  personal  contact  with  the 
working  people."^  In  other  words,  we  may  de- 
fine a  social  settlement  as  the  institutionalizing 
of  good  neighborship.  It  involves  a  definite, 
purposive  living  in  a  neighborhood  to  lead  and 
guide  in  all  matters  of  good  citizenship  not  by  a 
direct  appeal  to  individuals  to  lead  a  better  life, 
but  by  championing  the  rights  of  men  through 
the  lawful  agencies  already  existing  for  the 
building  up  of  a  decent  community  environment 
where  it  will  be  possible  for  a  godly  disposed 
folk  to  keep  saved  after  they  have  been  con- 
verted to  the  higher  life. 

But    it    is    not    always    necessary    for    the 

'  See  Bliss's  "Encyclopedia  of  Social  Reform,"  p.  110. 


THE  SOCIAL  SETTLEMENT  253 

church  in  a  given  locality  to  institutionalize  its 
method.  It  is  possible  for  many  families  to  em- 
body in  their  life  program  the  social-settlement 
idea  by  living  among  the  people  in  a  normal 
way.  This  was  the  fundamental  idea  in  the 
])rogram  of  John  Wesley,  and  accounts  for  the 
phenomenal  growth  of  Methodism  in  the  com- 
munities of  laboring  people  in  Great  Britain 
and  in  the  pioneer  communities  of  our  own 
country.  It  is  urgently  necessary,  however,  for 
many  of  our  local  churches  to  socialize  their 
methods  of  work  so  as  to  utilize  a  larger  num- 
ber of  the  total  membership  of  these  great  in- 
stitutions in  other  saving  activities  than  those 
that  are  carried  on  by  the  regular  services 
Avithin  the  church  edifice,  those  activities  that 
have  for  their  purpose  the  regenerating  of  the 
environment  of  the  people  through  interest  in 
their  behalf  at  the  city  hall,  or  in  the  directors ' 
meeting  of  the  corporation  that  holds  their  hu- 
man welfare  in  its  grasp,  or  at  the  juvenile  court, 
or  before  the  truant  officer,  where  it  is  possible 
for  social  justice  to  fail  through  the  lack  of  an 
intelligent  advocate  who  has  a  sympathy  bom 
of  contact  with  the  facts  as  they  are. 

In  speaking  of  the  value  of  the  social-settle- 
ment idea  in  church  work  before  the  First 
National  Conference  of  Social  Workers  of 
Methodism,  held  in  Saint  Louis  in  November, 
1908,  Miss  Isabelle  Horton,  of  Chicago,  stated 


254  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

the  following  as  one  phase  of  the  Church's  re- 
lation to  this  movement:  ''Considered  in  its 
relation  to  the  Church,  the  work  of  the  social 
settlement  must  be  largely  preparatory.  It  is 
hard  for  one  brought  up  under  the  droppings 
of  the  sanctuary,  drawing  in  with  every  breath 
the  influences  of  early  religious  training,  to 
understand  how  far  away  from  this  world  in 
which  he  lives  are  the  multitudes  that  we  speak 
of  as  the  'unchurched  masses' — how  life  be- 
comes narrowed  by  long  hours  of  heavy  toil, 
how  embittered  by  pinching  want,  how  brutal- 
ized by  intemperance,  how  chained  by  Old 
World  superstitions  and  habits.  The  Christian 
worker  who  goes  among  them  must  have  faith 
to  do  pioneer  work  and  trust  God  for  results 
that  may  be  most  apparent  in  the  next  genera- 
tion. She  (speaking  of  the  deaconess)  must 
root  up  weeds  of  false  teaching,  dig  out  rocks  of 
ignorance  and  prejudice,  break  up  the  fallow 
ground,  and  be  glad  if  it  is  given  to  her  to  drop 
a  seed  of  divine  tinith  here  and  there,  never  look- 
ing for  the  harvest  which  may  be  gathered  in 
times  which  she  will  not  live  to  see,  and  by  in- 
stitutions of  which  she  has  never  heard. '  '^  This 
form  of  church  activity  involves  the  idea  that 
the  saving  of  a  human  soul  includes  not  only 
the  decision  of  a  moment  at  the  church  altar,  or 
in  the  home,  but  also  the  creation  of  a  new  en- 

»  "The  Socialized  Ciiurch,"  pp.  168,  169. 


THE  SOCIAL  SETTLEMENT  255 

vironment  for  the  individual,  that  his  soul  may 
be  kept  as  well  as  saved.* 

The  Integrity  of  Human  Nature 

In  the  second  place,  the  social  settlement 
represents  the  idea  that  there  is  fundamentally 
an  integrity  about  human  nature  which  makes 
it  possible  for  people  in  whatever  social  state 
they  may  be  found  to  respond  to  the  appeal  for 
the  better  life.  If  this  were  not  the  case,  we 
could  not  conceive  of  how  the  Master  could  have 
intrusted  the  redeeming  of  the  world  to  a  few 
humble  fishermen  and  tentmakers,  who  them- 
selves had  responded  to  his  call  to  discipleship. 
In  settlement  work  it  is  often  discovered  that 
the  reason  people  have  not  responded  to  this  in- 
ward desire  for  better  things  is  not  that  such 
desire  is  always  lacking,  but,  rather,  that  the 
environing  conditions  were  such  that  they  could 
not  translate  such  desires  into  actual  conduct. 
It  is  for  this  very  purpose  that  the  religious 
social  settlement  was  established,  to  make  it 
possible  for  men  and  women  to  live  a  normal 
life  for  which  they  in  most  cases  have  an 
earnest  longing. 

The  Ministry  of  Personality 

In  the  third  place,  the  social  settlement  rep- 
resents the  ministry  of  personality.     This  great 

^  "The  Socialized  Church,"  compare  Miss  Horton's  statement,  p.  158. 


256  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

principle  of  human  betterment  is  worked  out 
in  practical  life  in  the  settlement  through  the 
laws  of  imitation,  cooperation,  and  good  neigh- 
borship. There  is  nothing  in  this  world  so  com- 
pelling as  the  power  of  benevolent  personality. 
The  officer  of  the  law  is  sometimes  mobbed  in 
trying  to  carry  out  some  ordinance  of  the  Board 
of  Health,  where  the  social-settlement  worker 
gets  a  willing  response  through  the  power  of 
personality.  The  principle  that  influences  your 
neighbor  to  rake  the  leaves  off  his  lot,  and  mow 
his  lawn,  and  plant  shrubbery  when  he  sees  you 
doing  these  things  is  the  same  principle  which 
makes  the  tenement  dweller  remove  the  tin  cans 
from  the  vacant  lot,  the  garbage  pail  or  wash- 
tub  from  the  fire  escape,  and  install  a  bath  in 
his  apartments,  when  he  has  come  in  contact 
with  the  social-settlement  worker  who  under- 
stands how  to  enforce  the  law  by  the  principle 
of  imitation.  "For  what  the  law  could  not  do, 
in  that  it  was  weak  through  the  flesh,  God  send- 
ing his  own  Son  in  the  likeness  of  sinful  flesh, 
and  for  sin,  condemned  sin  in  the  flesh.  "^ 

The  social  settlement  succeeds  in  its  minis- 
try of  personality  through  the  principle  of  co- 
operation. The  social  worker  helps  the  man 
with  new  vision  to  attain  what  he  tries  to  imi- 
tate. This  is  done  not  merely  in  an  individual 
way,  but  also  through  the  cooperation  of  institu- 

»  Note  Rom.  8.  3. 


THE  SOCIAL  SETTLEMENT  257 

tions  in  the  community.  To  quote  the  words  of 
Miss  Mary  E,  MacDowell,  director  of  the  Uni- 
versity of  Chicago  Settlement:  "The  settle- 
ment fills  the  place  of  an  experiment  station  in 
the  city  for  the  school  and  public  philanthropic 
societies,  and  cooperates  with  every  agency  that 
offers  to  serve  the  needs  of  its  neighbors.  The 
settlement  becomes  rooted  in  its  community  by 
the  personal  sympathetic,  neighborly  acts  that 
inevitably  lead  its  residents  to  the  city  hall, 
juvenile  court,  hospitals,  and  all  the  agencies 
that  help  to  ameliorate  the  hardness  of  the  lives 
of  those  who  through  poverty,  vice,  ignorance, 
and  inexperience  find  themselves  in  trouble.  In 
response  to  the  demand  of  the  community,  so- 
cial, educational,  philanthropic,  and  sometimes 
religious,  activities  organize  themselves  into 
clubs  and  classes."* 

Again,  the  ministry  of  personality  is  ex- 
pressed in  good  neighborship  in  the  work  of 
the  social  settlement.  There  is  great  danger  in 
our  modern  industrial  life  and  in  the  institu- 
tionalizing of  all  our  Church  activities  that 
we  lose  sight  of  this  great  principle  of  Chris- 
tianity. In  former  days,  when  the  problems  of 
population  were  not  so  pressing  as  now,  in  times 
of  sickness  and  death,  we  depended  upon  some 
good  neighbor;  to-day  we  leave  such  matters 
to  the  physician,  the  trained  nurse,  and  the 

»  "The  Socialized  Church,"  p.  143. 


258  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

undertaker.  When  disputes  arose  we  consulted 
our  neighbor  as  to  what  was  best  to  do ;  but  to- 
day we  leave  the  matter  to  our  lawyer.  Now, 
all  this  is  the  result  of  the  changing  social 
order;  but,  nevertheless,  in  the  midst  of  it  all 
we  still  need  that  ministry  of  personality  which 
is  represented  by  the  conduct  of  the  good  neigh- 
bor. The  social  settlement  meets  this  demand 
through  the  work  of  the  friendly  visitor  and  the 
alertness  of  the  social  workers  who  touch  the 
life  of  the  community  at  every  point  of  need. 

AVhat  Cak  the  Church  Do? 

It  may  be  asked  by  the  thoughtful  reader  at 
this  point,  ^'Wliat  can  the  Church  do  in  making 
use  of  the  social-settlement  idea?"  It  may  be 
said  that  the  Church  has  not  only  been  the 
founder  of  the  social  settlement,  but  it  has  suc- 
cessfully maintained  the  most  effective  settle- 
ments of  the  three  hundred  or  more  now  estab- 
lished in  the  world ;  not  only  directly,  in  found- 
ing them,  but  also  indirectly,  through  the 
educational  institutions  and  the  noble  men  and 
women  who  have  been  trained  in  the  work  of 
the  kingdom  by  the  Church,  and  have  gotten 
their  motive  and  vision  from  the  example  and 
teaching  of  Jesus,  who  **  became  flesh,  and 
dwelt  among  us." 

In  the  first  place,  the  Church  can  successfully 
utilize  the  social-settlement  idea  by  enlarging 


THE  SOCIAL  SETTLEMENT  269 

the  scope  of  the  deaconess  work  so  as  to  elude 
in  every  population  center  a  "Church  Settle- 
ment House,"  where  trained  women  could  give 
their  entire  time  to  community  work.  This 
would  require  additional  courses  and  field  work 
in  the  curriculum  of  the  deaconess  training 
schools.  The  Church  could  also  modify  its  edu- 
cational policy  in  the  theological  schools  so  as 
to  train  men  to  become  head  workers  in  social 
settlements,  not  only  those  under  the  direct  con- 
trol of  the  Church  but  also  other  settlements 
established  by  universities  and  private  philan- 
thropy. The  candidates  for  the  ministry  in 
some  of  our  theological  seminaries  are  already 
receiving  such  training  where  there  has  been 
established  a  deiDartment  of  "Christian  Soci- 
ology," "Social  Ethics,"  or  "Applied  Chris- 
tianity," as  the  case  may  be. 

Again,  the  Church  can  realize  these  ends  by 
establishing  special  Bible  training  classes  in 
the  Sunday  school  made  up  of  picked  men  and 
women  who  have  the  gifts  and  liking  for  such 
work.  Ample  materials  may  be  found  in  the 
Gospels  and  the  Epistles  for  such  study,  be- 
sides helps  from  books  already  published  on  the 
social  settlement  and  the  various  phases  of  its 
work.  Such  a  class  properly  manged  by  a  com- 
petent man  or  woman  could  do  some  excellent 
field  work  in  our  cities  where  social  settlements 
are  already  established,  having  the  advantage 


260  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

of  years  of  experimental  work,  whereby  they 
may  see  the  reasons  for  the  successes  and  fail- 
ures of  the  social  settlement  as  now  conducted. 

The  Church  could  also  adopt  some  ''connec- 
tional"  system,  similar  to  the  plan  of  conduct- 
ing foreign  mission  work  and  the  deaconess 
work,  whereby  these  trained  workers  could  be 
given  a  definite  salarj^,  and  an  appeal  could  be 
made  for  volunteers  that  should  be  as  strong  in 
Christian  motive  as  any  appeal  now  made  for 
the  foreign  field  or  the  deaconess  work,  because 
of  the  strategic  significance  of  the  modern  city 
and  the  deplorable  condition  of  church  work  in 
many  of  the  populous  rural  districts. 

The  time  has  come  when  we  need  trained  so- 
cial engineers  for  these  two  mighty  fields  of 
Christian  work ;  and  it  seems  to  me  that  if  men 
could  be  assured  by  the  Church  of  a  decent 
living  and  a  chance  to  stay  on  the  job  until  their 
work  is  accomplished  in  any  given  community, 
there  would  be  a  ready  response  by  some  of  the 
strongest  young  men  in  our  universities  and 
colleges  to  the  appeal  of  Jesus  for  laborers  in 
these  fields  of  potential  harvests;  a  chance  to 
mold  the  life  of  a  whole  downtown  district  with 
a  teeming  population  of  the  upward-struggling 
and  downward-slipping  of  all  the  nations ;  or  a 
chance  to  organize  the  social,  civic,  and  religious 
life  of  a  whole  county  in  some  of  our  rural  dis- 
tricts. 


THE  SOCIAL  SETTLEMENT  261 

But  we  are  not  to  infer  that  this  social-set- 
tlement idea  is  to  be  a  permanent  expression  of 
church  work  in  these  fields.  Our  methods  must 
change  with  the  changing  social  need.  The 
kingdom  of  God  on  earth  does  not  consist 
merely  in  doing  these  things.  This  is  only  a 
part  of  the  process  by  which  the  kingdom  of 
God  is  to  be  established  in  the  city  and  in  the 
country  districts.  In  the  kingdom  of  God  there 
are  to  be  no  lost  sheep,  no  miserable  victims  of 
the  *^ system"  or  of  sin,  because  the  principles 
of  the  gospel  which  Jesus  brought  to  man  will 
ultimately  be  acted  upon  by  all.  There  may  be 
sickness  or  distress,  but  the  people  will  not  be 
left  as  ''sheep  without  a  shepherd,"  for  there 
will  be  some  one  to  care  for  them  through  the 
ministry  of  personality,  some  institutions  to 
look  after  the  welfare  of  the  helpless.  But  until 
the  cities  and  the  villages  have  heeded  the 
preaching  and  example  of  the  disciples  of  Jesus 
they  will  still  need  the  charity  of  the  disciples. 
So  our  task  of  training  workers  and  manning 
institutions  and  molding  public  opinion  must 
go  on  for  some  time  to  come  until  we  get  all 
people  to  live  right,  so  that  we  may  have  the 
least  possible  residuum  of  the  defective  social 
output  in  pauperism,  defectiveness,  and  crime 
— the  chief  evils  which  make  the  social  settle- 
ment necessary,  but  whose  causes  lie  deeper  in 
the  derangement  of  the  changing  social  order. 


CHAPTER  XXII 

THE  SOCIAL,  CAUSES  OF  THE  BOY  PROBLEM 

It  will  be  readily  admitted  by  all  who  are 
interested  in  the  betterment  and  welfare  of 
human  society  that  we  have  what  is  termed 
'Hhe  boy  problem."  It  may  be  stated  in  two 
ways;  first,  from  the  viewjDoint  of  the  *'bad 
boy ' '  and  how  to  reclaim  him ;  second,  from  the 
viewpoint  of  the  normal  "good  boy"  and  how 
he  has  been  kept  from  the  bad.  In  other  words, 
we  find  a  certain  percentage  of  the  boys  in  any 
community  who  may  be  characterized  under  the 
first,  and  a  certain  percentage  who  are  normally 
growing  up  in  the  community  to  worthy  man- 
hood who  are  designated  by  the  second.  So, 
then,  the  boy  problem  really  involves  both  pre- 
vention  and  reclamation,  but  before  we  can  suc- 
cessfully meet  the  boy  problem  in  either  of  its 
important  phases  we  ought  to  know  something 
of  the  social  causes  that  make  the  boy  problem 
so  important.  If  we  discover  the  causes  of  the 
increasing  numbers  of  delinquent  boys  in  every 
civilized  country  to  be  preventable  social  causes^ 
then  the  fact  is  clear  that  preventive  salvation 
is  the  solution  of  the  hoy  problem. 

We  do  not  need  to  go  very  far  from  home  to 

262 


SOCIAL  NEGLECT  OF  BOYS  263 

see  evidences  of  the  acuteness  of  the  boy  prob- 
lem which  the  Church  has  to  face  in  the  present. 
In  New  York  city  last  year^  there  were  twelve 
thousand  boys  brought  before  the  juvenile 
court,  and,  according  to  the  statement  of  the 
clerk  of  the  court,  more  than  one  half  of  that 
vast  number  were  there  because  they  had  no 
place  to  play.  Standing  at  the  railroad  station 
of  one  of  our  suburban  towns  one  Sunday 
evening  during  the  summer,  the  writer  counted 
nearly  fifty  boys  between  fourteen  and  twenty 
years  of  age  waiting  for  the  train  to  distribute 
them  at  their  homes  in  adjacent  towns  after  a 
Sabbath  of  carousing  at  a  Sunday  baseball  field, 
and  in  the  saloon — open  in  defiance  of  the  law 
which  represents  the  organized  expression  of 
the  public  opinion  in  that  town.  In  any  city  or 
town  in  the  country  at  large  it  is  possible  dur- 
ing the  hours  of  Sunday  school  service  to  count 
as  many  boys  from  fourteen  to  twenty-one 
years  of  age  on  the  streets  as  may  be  found  of 
the  same  age  within  the  Sunday  schools.  This 
condition  of  adolescent  boyhood  is  not  confined 
to  our  country. 

In  Europe  it  has  been  shown  by  statistics  re- 
cently compiled  that  crimes  among  boys  of  the 
adolescent  period  are  on  the  increase.  It  is 
claimed  by  Sunday  school  experts  that  we  lose 
permanently    from    the    Sunday    school    and 

> 1909-10. 


264  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

church  life  from  forty-two  to  seventy-five  per 
cent  of  the  boys  that  have  been  enrolled.^ 

When  we  come  to  study  the  character  of  the 
inmates  of  our  penal  institutions  for  males  we 
find  the  vast  majority  of  them  are  young  men 
under  twenty-eight  years  of  age. 

These  and  many  other  facts  that  are  well 
known  to  the  reader  will  indicate  that  we  have 
a  very  difficult  phase  of  the  boy  problem  to 
deal  with  from  the  viewpoint  of  reclamation. 
And  when  we  come  to  study  the  causes  we  find 
in  every  case  that  they  lie  outside  the  narrow 
range  of  the  individual  person  involved,  and 
are  either  deep  seated  in  the  laws  of  heredity, 
or  lie  within  the  broader  ranges  of  responsible 
social  groups  which  are  guilty  of  neglect  in  the 
treatment  of  boys.  Here  is  where  we  discover 
the  social  causes  of  the  boy  problem,  which  may 
be  classified  under  three  general  heads,  as  (1) 
Family  Neglect,  (2)  Community  Neglect,  (3) 
Church  Neglect.  The  chief  causes,  therefore, 
of  the  boy  problem  lie  in  the  failure  of  one  or 
more  of  these  responsible  social  groups  to  pro- 
vide for  the  boy  the  things  that  would  make 
possible  the  normal  satisfaction  and  exercise  of 
all  the  unfolding  instincts  and  growing  faculties 
of  the  adolescent  personality.  I  believe  in  the 
statement  of  Phillips  Brooks,  already  referred 


1  See  report  of  International  Sunday  School  Association  Conven- 
tion, held  in  Washington,  D.  C,  in  1910. 


SOCIAL  NEGLECT  OF  BOYS  265 

to,  that  a  man  is  a  criminal  not  so  much  by 
virtue  of  what  he  has  acquired  as  by  virtue  of 
what  he  has  missed ;  and  our  treatment  of  him 
is  to  be  governed  by  that  fact :  not  that  he  has 
become  a  criminal,  but  that  he  has  not  become 
fully  a  man.  This  principle  in  modern  penology 
gives  us  the  clue  to  the  discovery  of  the  social 
causes  of  the  delinquency  in  boys,  for  in  almost 
every  case  in  dealing  with  a  delinquent  boy  we 
discover  that  he  has  been  guilty  of  no  greater 
crime  than  the  attempt  to  satisfy  a  perfectly 
normal  desire  in  an  unlawful  way,  and  had  this 
desire  been  provided  for  by  wise  measures  for 
satisfaction,  or  by  sane  measures  of  restraint, 
there  would  have  been  no  delinquent  conduct 
to  be  atoned  for. 

So  then  the  boy  problem  takes  on  two  as- 
pects, the  one  of  provision,  the  other  of  preven- 
tion. Or  we  may  state  the  problem  in  terms  of 
the  normal  and  abnormal  aspects — one  treating 
of  how  to  provide  for  the  normal  satisfaction 
in  the  growth  of  boys,  the  other  treating  of  how 
we  may  prevent  the  causes  of  abnormal  satis- 
factions in  the  life  of  boys  that  make  our  prob- 
lem an  acute  one. 

Family  Neglect  a  Social  Cause 

In  many  families,  and  not  alone  among  the 
lower  grades  in  the  social  scale,  boys  are  not 
taught  in  any  adequate  way  the  meaning  of 


266  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEEK 

their  developing  bodily  functions.  Parents 
neglect  to  inform  their  children  of  the  sacred- 
ness  of  sex,  and  of  the  dangers  in  the  paths  of 
unlawful  gratification  of  otherwise  normal  de- 
sires. We  cannot  begin  too  soon  to  teach  our 
boys  in  the  home  the  positive  as  well  as  the 
negative  phases  of  bodily  functioning,  for  they 
will  soon  learn  from  others  for  good  or  bad, 
and  reproach  us  for  our  neglect  or  thank  us 
for  our  forethought.  In  talking  with  a  layman 
some  time  ago  whose  son  was  then  a  freshman 
in  college,  the  conversation  turned  on  the  sub- 
ject of  i^arental  obligation  in  this  matter,  and 
he  told  me  that  his  son  had  just  written  him,  ex- 
pressing his  gratitude  to  a  father  who  had  been 
wise  enough  to  tell  him  of  the  dangers  that 
confront  many  a  young  man  away  from  home 
for  the  first  time. 

Parents  often  neglect  to  provide  for  the 
normal  expression  of  the  instincts  for  play  and 
recreation,  and  then  wonder  why  their  boys  are 
guilty  of  truancy  from  home,  as  well  as  from 
the  school,  and  later  in  life  they  may  become 
truants  from  gainful  occupations,  and  a  life  of 
crime  is  often  the  outcome.  I  know  a  hard- 
working farmer  who  plays  tennis  at  the  noon 
hour,  and  at  sunset  after  an  early  supper,  with 
his  three  growing  lads,  or  takes  them  to  the 
ball  game  in  the  village  Saturday  afternoons, 
or  during  the  long  winter  nights  plays  table  and 


SOCIAL  NEGLECT  OF  BOYS  267 

parlor  games,  or  reads  to  them  a  good  story; 
and  it  is  safe  to  say  that  there  is  not  the  slight- 
est chance  of  these  boys  ever  becoming  guilty 
of  abnormal  gratification  of  the  play  instincts 
and  desires  for  healthful  recreation. 

The  family  also  often  neglects  to  guard  the 
boy's  companionships.  This  point  cannot  be  too 
strongly  emphasized,  for  what  a  boy  learns 
from  his  companions  in  the  play  period  of  life 
will  often  determine  for  him  his  choices  in  the 
period  of  youth.  Here  the  parents  must  be 
positive,  firm,  and  frank  in  giving  the  boy 
reasons  why  he  shall  not  companion  with  cer- 
tain other  boys  in  the  neighborhood.  It  is  a 
fact  that  needs  to  be  understood  by  parents 
and  teachers  that  conduct  controls  our  thinking 
as  much  as  our  thinking  controls  our  conduct. 
Many  a  boy  is  incited  to  unlawful  gratifications 
b}^  the  memory  in  adolescence  of  conduct  thnt 
had  no  meaning  to  him  in  earlier  childhood. 
We  cannot,  therefore,  guard  too  well  the  en- 
vironmental sources  of  the  boy's  life  repre- 
sented by  his  companionships. 

Again,  parents  frequently  neglect  to  teach 
boys  the  positive  things  in  relation  to  life.  In- 
stead of  seeking  to  guide  the  energies  of  youth 
in  channels  of  useful  service,  they  often  seek 
to  repress  energies  that  overflow  in  mischievous 
currents  because  no  better  channel  is  offered. 
Instead   of  whipping  a  boy  for  painting  the 


268  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

front  gate  with  mud  from  the  gutter  it  is  better 
to  direct  and  encourage  this  gift  by  giving  him 
a  chance  to  whitewash  the  fence  in  the  back  lot. 
Instead  of  telling  a  boy  nine  times  a  day  how 
he  will  escape  the  bad  by  not  doing  certain 
things  tell  him  ten  times  a  day  how  he  may  at- 
tain the  good  by  doing  certain  things.  In  other 
words,  parental  neglect  to  provide  for  legiti- 
mate exercise  of  the  boy's  normal  activities  is 
a  frequent  cause  of  badness  in  otherwise  normal 
boys. 

Community  Neglect  a  Social.  Cause 

It  is  easy  to  see  that  in  many  cases  the  family 
cannot  handle  the  boy  problem  successfully  be- 
cause of  the  neglect  of  the  community  to  co- 
operate with  the  family  in  providing  for  the 
needs  of  the  boys.  For  example,  in  the  crowded 
quarters  of  the  tenement  districts  of  our  cities 
it  is  impossible  for  parents  to  provide  for  the 
control  of  the  energies  of  boyhood.  We  know 
the  effect  of  the  municipal  playground  upon  the 
statistics  of  juvenile  crime  in  certain  localities, 
hence  it  is  only  a  matter  of  common  sense  for 
us  to  conclude  that  failure  to  provide  such  fa- 
cilities for  play  is  a  social  cause  of  the  crimes 
reported  to  the  juvenile  courts  of  the  cities. 

Inadequate  school  facilities,  which  ]:>laces  the 
boys  on  the  streets  for  a  long  period  of  the  day, 
are  a  frequent  cause  of  mischief  among  the  boys 


SOCIAL  NEGLECT  OF  BOYS  269 

of  the  crowded  city  streets.  Neglect  in  many 
communities  to  provide  the  means  for  indus- 
trial education  results  in  many  a  boy  who  has 
no  home  opportunities  becoming  a  useless  mem- 
ber of  society  when  he  has  grown  up.  I  am 
quite  sure  that  community  neglect  in  many  com- 
munities is  represented  by  the  failure  of  school 
boards  to  provide  teachers  who  understand 
boys,  by  the  choosing  of  policemen  who  have 
forgotten  the  days  of  boj'-hood,  and  by  the  ap- 
pointment of  judges  who  have  more  regard  for 
legal  precedents  than  they  have  human  sym- 
pathy for  a  boy  who  has  been  brought  before 
the  court  for  a  misdemeanor. 

Now,  if  a  community  can  root  out  the  evil  of 
junk-stealing  by  boys  through  the  good  sense 
of  the  judge  who  recommended  the  punishment 
of  the  junk  dealers,  the  originators  of  the 
traffic,  is  it  not  true  that  failure  to  do  such  a 
thing  by  any  community  in  dealing  with  the 
boy  victims  of  illegal  traffic  in  vice  is  one  of 
the  chief  causes  of  the  boy  problem  of  to-day? 
There  is,  therefore,  a  very  wide  field  for  pro- 
gressive social  action  in  every  community  in 
providing  in  a  positive  way  for  the  conduct  of 
boys  who  have  been  hitherto  woefully  neglected. 

Church  Neglect  a  Social  Cause 

It  should  be  stated  at  the  outset  under  this 
heading  that  the  adoption  of  the  graded-lesson 


270  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

system  in  the  Sunday  schools  and  the  emphasis 
now  being  given  to  the  training  of  teachers 
in  Sunday-school  pedagogy,  which  includes  a 
study  of  child  psychology^  go  a  long  way  in 
making  up  for  the  neglect  by  the  Church  of  the 
boys  that  have  been  within  the  reach  of  the 
Sunday  school.  But  there  are  many  preachers 
and  laymen  who  even  to-day,  when  the  district 
superintendent  asks  the  disciplinary  question  in 
Quarterly  Conference,^  ''Plave  the  rules  re- 
specting the  instruction  of  children  been  carried 
out?"  have  to  answer,  as  in  former  days,  **In 
part."  It  is  not  to  our  credit  that  in  many 
quarters  we  are  still  building  edifices  for  the 
purpose  of  public  worship  at  enormous  cost, 
and  little  if  any  provision  is  being  made  in  these 
same  quarters  for  the  care,  religious  instruc- 
tion, and  social  direction  of  the  young  life  of  the 
community.  I  was  invited  recently  to  visit  and 
address  a  young  people 's  rally  in  a  church  that 
has  lately  completed  a  splendid  ''parish  house," 
for  the  social  and  religious  life  of  the  young 
people  of  the  community,  and  I  counted  pres- 
ent on  a  week  night  over  one  hundred  boys 
between  ten  and  twenty-one  years  of  age.  It 
may  be  said  here  to  the  credit  of  the  men  who 
are  controlling  that  enterprise  that  within  the 
next  five  years  there  will  be  no  "boy  problem" 
in  that  church  community,  because  the  church 

» lu  "Methodist  Polity." 


SOCIAL  NEGLECT  OF  BOYS  271 

is  learning  to  provide  for  the  normal  conduct 
of  those  boys.  The  failure  of  the  church  to 
provide  such  means  for  the  young  life  of  the 
community  is  one  of  the  greatest  social  causes 
of  the  modern  boy  problem. 

Preventive  Salvation  the  Solution  of  the 
Boy  Pboblem 

It  is  clear  to  our  minds,  therefore,  that  if  we 
know  the  chief  causes  are  social,  and  hence  pre- 
ventable, it  follows  as  a  matter  of  sound  reason 
that  preventive  work  in  religious  social  service 
is  the  ultimate  solution  of  the  boy  problem,  even 
if  we  must  continue,  because  of  social  neglect 
by  families,  communities,  and  churches,  to 
utilize  methods  of  reclaiming  those  who  have 
not  received  positive  social  direction. 

How  this  work  may  be  carried  on  by  re- 
ligious social  engineering  we  have  outlined  in 
previous  chapters  on  *' Preventive  Social  En- 
gineering," and  ''Preventive  Salvation,"  ''So- 
cial Salvation,"  etc.  What  I  have  tried  to  em- 
phasize in  all  these  chapters  is  this :  that  while 
we  are  doing  the  work  of  rescue,  and  pro\^ding 
remedial  agencies  for  the  many  delinquent,  de- 
pendent, and  defective  classes  in  society,  we 
should  not  fail  to  see  that  to  secure  any  per- 
manent results  for  social  progress  we  must 
place  supreme  emphasis  upon  those  forms  of 
social  service  that  deal  in  a  positive  way  with 


272  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

the  preventable  causes  of  social  ills  that  are 
known.  We  should  not  spend  all  our  time  in 
organizing  sewing  circles  to  "patch  the  pants 
of  poverty,"  when  we  ought  to  be  engaged  in 
reforms  that  will  clothe  men  in  the  garments 
of  righteousness,  so  that  they  will  render  social 
justice  to  their  fellows  and  make  poverty  less 
prevalent,  if  not  altogether  impossible. 


CHAPTER  XXIII 

THE    SOCIAL    CAUSES    OF    THE    SPIRITUAL    DEATH 

RATE 

In  the  study  of  human  population  the  death 
rate  furnishes  us  an  index  to  social  progress. 
We  know  by  experience  that  among  civilized 
peoples  about  one  half  of  the  people  who  are 
born  die  before  the  age  of  twenty-six.  We  also 
know  that  the  rate  of  deaths  per  one  thousand 
of  the  population  varies  in  different  localities, 
and  in  communities  of  the  same  locality,  and  it 
differs  also  according  to  the  age  periods  of  the 
people  from  infancy  to  old  age.  We  know  also 
from  the  findings  of  medical  science  that  the 
causes  of  death  of  the  majority  of  those  who  die 
so  young  lie  outside  the  range  of  the  voluntary 
conduct  of  the  victims,  and  are  attributable  to 
causes  in  environment  that  are,  under  an  aroused 
public  opinion,  preventable.  The  facts  are  so 
familiar  that  relating  them  here  for  purposes  of 
illustration  is  unnecessary.  These  facts,  how- 
ever, furnish  us  a  striking  analogy  for  the  study 
of  what  we  may  popularly  term  the  spiritual 
death  rate,  which  furnishes  the  student  of  re- 
ligious statistics  with  an  index  to  religious  so- 

273 


274  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

cial  progress.  Here  too  we  find  that  about  one 
lialf  of  those  in  evangelical  Protestantism  who 
may  be  properly  reckoned  as  having  been 
touched  by  the  life  of  the  Church  in  baptism  or 
nurtured  in  the  home,  the  Sunday-  school,  and  in 
the  religious  groupings  of  church  membership, 
pass  out  of  range  of  the  Church's  reckoning 
before  the  age  of  twenty-one;  and  without  go- 
ing into  the  question  of  what  ultimately  becomes 
of  them,  we  may  include  them  in  making  up, 
what  is  here  used  in  the  popular  sense,  the 
spiritual  death  rate.  We  know  also  from  the 
records  of  religious  statistics  that  this  rate 
varies  in  different  localities,  and  in  different 
communities  in  the  same  locality,  and  varies 
with  the  age  periods  of  those  who  are  under 
religious  statistical  observation.  Now,  the 
question  of  importance  for  us  in  following  this 
analogy  is.  Do  the  causes  of  the  spiritual  death 
rate  (using  the  term  in  its  popular  sense  to 
mean  those  who  drop  out  of  the  Church's  grasp 
in  adolescence,  or  as  adults  bj^  blacksliding 
after  a  religious  awakening)  lie  outside  the 
range  of  the  voluntary  conduct  of  the  persons 
involved?  I  think  that  we  can  affirm  at  once 
that  some  of  the  causes  lie  outside  of  that  range, 
and  may  be  classed  as  social  because  they  are 
preventable  by  the  awakening  of  the  religious 
social  consciousness  to  the  point  of  organizing 
agencies  that  will  eliminate  them. 


THE  SPIEITUAL  DEATH  EATE  275 

Neglect  of  Childhood 

The  chief  social  cause  of  premature  death  is 
neglect  of  childhood  by  the  community  or  the 
family,  and  failure  to  provide  against  prevent- 
able social  diseases  among  adults.  We  can  con- 
clude, therefore,  at  once  that  the  chief  social 
cause  of  the  spiritual  death  rate  is  the  neglect, 
by  some  responsible  social  group  under  the 
Church's  control,  to  provide  for  the  child  life 
of  the  Church,  and  to  ward  off  the  preventable 
social  forces  in  the  community  that  destroy 
spiritual  life  and  character.  This  neglect  is 
represented  by  our  failure  to  provide  for  the 
normal  satisfactions  of  the  dawning  religious 
consciousness  of  childhood  which  is  not  to  be 
separated,  by  a  false  adult  psychology,  from 
the  expressions  of  normal  child-consciousness; 
and,  to  illustrate  further:  we  often  neglect  to 
change  our  methods  to  suit  the  changing  periods 
of  adolescent  development.  In  fact,  with  few 
exceptions  here  and  there,  we  have  done  nothing 
to  standardize  our  social  machinery  for  dealing 
with  the  young  people  at  the  most  critical  period 
of  adolescence,  from  fifteen  to  twenty-one,  when 
the  social  instincts  are  seeking  conscious  direc- 
tion; hence  our  machinery  breaks  down  so 
utterly  that  in  some  communities  the  Protestant 
churches  lose  nearly  all  the  young  men  and 
women  for  that  period  of  life,  and  for  the  coun- 


276  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

try  at  large  the  rate  of  loss  varies  by  dif- 
ferent authoritative  standards  of  reckoning 
from  forty-two  per  cent  to  seventy-five  per  cent 
of  all  those  who  have  been  enrolled  as  baptized 
in  childhood  or  entered  as  probationers  and  the 
catechized  of  the  Church. 

The  fact  that  the  greatest  loss  in  members 
to  the  Church  is  in  that  period  of  adolescence 
before  the  judgment  is  fully  foinned  and  settled 
into  stable  habits  of  adult  life  confirms  us  in 
the  assertion  that  the  chief  social  cause  of  the 
spiritual  death  rate  is  neglect  of  childhood  by 
the  religious  social  groups  in  the  community. 
In  the  study  of  the  causes  of  juvenile  crime  we 
have  discovered  that  the  boy  is  not  a  criminal 
essentially  by  \'irtue  of  what  he  has  acquired, 
but,  rather,  by  virtue  of  what  he  has  missed. 
The  report  of  the  secretary  of  the  juvenile 
court  of  New  York  city  confirms  this  when  he 
states  that  of  the  twelve  thousand  boys  brought 
before  that  body  last  year  (1910),  more  than 
half  of  them  were  there  because  they  had  no 
place  to  play,  which  fixed  the  cause  not  in  the 
boy  primarily  but  in  the  community  that  had 
failed  to  provide  for  the  normal  satisfaction  of 
the  play  instincts  of  this  vast  army  of  boys. 

This  principle  is  confirmed  also  by  the  fact 
that  the  rate  of  loss  varies  in  different  commu- 
nities. In  communities  made  up  largely  of  for- 
eigners,  where   the   standards    of   spirituality 


THE  SPIRITUAL  DEATH  EATE  277 

differ  from  those  set  by  evangelical  Protestant- 
ism, but  where  the  Protestant  Church  alone  is 
ministering  to  such  a  community,  we  find  the 
rate  of  loss  much  higher  than  in  a  community 
where  different  standards  prevail.  Here  the  so- 
cial cause  of  the  sj^iritual  death  rate  is  apparent 
in  the  standards  of  the  community  life  among 
parents  and  adults  which  makes  it  almost  im- 
possible for  the  young  people  of  fifteen  to 
twentj'-one  years  of  age,  under  present  methods 
of  church  life,  to  adopt  our  standards  with  re- 
spect to  social  recreation  and  amusement.  We 
must,  therefore,  put  the  greater  emphasis  upon 
the  provision,  for  the  young  j^eople  of  that 
period,  of  those  forms  of  social  activity  that 
will  give  normal  satisfaction  to  their  social  in- 
stincts and  at  the  same  time  have  in  them  a 
wholesome  religious  significance.  I  am  very 
glad  to  be  able  to  state  that  there  is  to-day  an 
increasing  number  of  churches  that  are  making 
such  provision  for  the  young  people,  and  are 
standarizing  their  methods  and  machinery  for 
carrying  on  the  work  of  a  parish  house,  so  that 
you  can  count  at  an  ordinary  meeting,  in  one  of 
them  that  comes  to  my  mind,  over  one  hundred 
boj^s  from  fourteen  to  twenty-one,  and  on  spe- 
cial occasions,  when  a  ** social"  is  being  held, 
an  equal  number  of  young  girls  in  their  early 
teens.  In  these  same  churches,  before  they 
made  such  provision,  the  loss  was  over  fifty  per 


278  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

cent  of  the  young  people  of  the  Sunday  school 
from  church  membership;  to-day  the  percent- 
age is  reduced  to  the  minimmn. 

Still  another  confirmatory  fact  of  this  social 
cause  is  that  the  rate  changes  with  the  age 
periods  of  the  young  life  of  the  Church.  Here 
the  social  neglect  is  represented  by  the  failure 
of  the  religious  group  to  change  its  methods  of 
treatment  of  the  young  life  of  the  community  to 
suit  the  changes  that  are  taking  place  within 
the  growing  children  of  both  sexes.  This  neg- 
lect is  being  met,  in  part,  by  the  study  of  child 
psycholog}^  in  religious  pedagogy,  and  by  the 
adoption  of  the  graded-lesson  system  in  the 
Sunday  schools.  It  will  take  a  generation  to 
make  this  new  emphasis  in  religious  education 
effective,  because  the  greater  part  of  the  re- 
ligious social  machinery  for  putting  it  into 
operation  is  in  the  control  of  those  who,  in  the 
nature  of  the  case,  have  placed  the  greater  em- 
phasis upon  rescue  methods  in  salvation  rather 
than  upon  preventive  measures. 

Neglect  to  Organize  Adult  Members 

Another  social  cause  of  loss  in  membership 
in  the  churches  is  neglect  to  organize  the  adult 
members  of  the  church  in  forms  of  social  serv- 
ice outside  the  church  building,  and  in  the  in- 
terest of  the  community  without  any  special 
reference  to  the  maintaining  of  the  individual 


THE  SPIKITUAL  DEATH  KATE  279 

church  organization — in  other  words,  neglect 
to  provide  the  means  for  spiritual  growth 
through  religious  occupational  activity.  Too 
many  men  in  all  the  churches  to-day  are  still 
idle  in  the  market  place  because  ''no  man  hath 
hired"  them.  In  the  case  of  adults  who  have 
been  brought  into  the  Church  through  evan- 
gelistic effort  in  the  revival  meeting,  the 
largest  percentage  of  these  who  backslide  is 
due  to  lack  of  spiritual  occupational  service. 
It  is,  therefore,  only  a  matter  of  providing  re- 
ligious social  leadership  to  conserve  the  adult 
forces  of  the  churches. 

I  was  asked  recently  to  address  a  men's 
Bible  class  of  one  of  our  largest  and  wealth- 
iest suburban  churches  at  their  annual  banquet. 
In  that  church  the  social  consciousness  has  been 
awakened,  and  a  new  parish  house  is  in  process 
of  erection,  and  these  men  were  anxious  to  de- 
velop a  plan  for  performing  a  larger  service 
to  the  community  and  for  the  kingdom  of  God. 
These  splendid  fellows,  nearly  one  hundred  in 
number,  were  not  satisfied  with  ''holding  a 
service";  they  were  now  anxious  "to  do  a  serv- 
ice" outside  the  church  building;  so  as  a  result 
of  their  recent  conferences  with  religious  social 
engineers,  and  as  a  result  of  their  own  survey 
of  their  community  with  its  social  needs,  some 
of  these  men  will  be  engaged  in  work  for  the 
foreigners,  mostly  Italians,  in  one  quarter  of 


280  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

the  city ;  another  group  will  be  interested  in  the 
problems  of  religious  pedagogy  in  the  Sunday 
school;  another  group  will  be  working  for  the 
cooperation  of  all  good  men  in  the  government 
of  the  city  and  in  promoting  social  justice 
among  all  the  competing  groups  of  the  popula- 
tion; still  another  group  will  be  studying  and 
working  on  the  problems  of  industrial  peace  be- 
tween organized  labor  and  organized  capital; 
still  another  group  will  be  interested  in  the 
study  of  organized  charities  and  the  prevent- 
able causes  of  poverty  and  human  suffering; 
and  still  others  will  be  interested  in  the  cam- 
paign against  social  diseases,  and  the  evils  of 
intemperance  and  the  saloon;  and  at  the  same 
time  they  will  all  be  consciously  cooperating 
with  all  good  citizens  everywhere  in  building  up 
that  form  of  orderly  government  in  human  so- 
ciety that  will  ultimately  take  on  the  character 
of  the  kingdom  of  God  on  earth. 

Now,  these  men,  because  of  their  daily  tasks 
as  breadwinners  and  men  of  affairs  in  business 
and  professional  life,  as  well  as  those  in  occu- 
pational employment,  cannot,  in  the  nature  of 
the  case,  all  have  the  same  type  of  religious  ex- 
perience, and  unless  the  Church  can  relate  their 
activities  to  the  kingdom  of  God,  and  thus  give 
to  them  a  religious  significance,  many  of  these 
men  will  begin  to  feel  that  they  are  doing  noth- 
ing for  the  Church  worthy  of  a  Christian ;  and, 


THE  SPIRITUAL  DEATH  RATE  281 

unless  somebody  directs  them  in  the  work  of 
the  kingdom,  it  will  be  no  surprise  if  later  they 
are  not  even  found  in  the  market  place  of 
religious  employment.  There  is  no  religious 
movement  in  modern  times  that  compares  in 
importance,  save  that  of  religious  education, 
with  that  of  the  movement  within  all  Protestant 
denominations  for  the  employment  of  Christian 
men  in  forms  of  social  service  in  the  community. 
Neglect  to  do  this  has  been  one  of  the  chief  so- 
cial causes  of  the  lapses  from  church  member- 
ship of  adults.  No  activity  carried  on  by  men 
which  has  to  do  with  the  comfort,  health,  and 
happiness  of  the  community,  and  is  a  necessary 
part  of  the  world's  work,  should  be  regarded 
merely  as  '' secular,"  but  in  the  larger  view  of 
the  kingdom  of  God  it  should  be  given  a  re- 
ligious significance,  and  the  man  who  so  works 
has  the  approval  of  the  Master,  and  should 
have  no  occasion  for  losing  his  interest  in  the 
Church. 

Space  will  not  permit  the  consideration  of 
the  other  social  causes  of  the  spiritual  death 
rate,  such  as  that  which  grow  out  of  the  de- 
velopment of  class  consciousness,  cleavage,  and 
conflict,  that  have  resulted  in  revolt  from  the 
spiritual  leadership  of  the  Church.  Nor  have 
we  the  space  to  treat  of  the  economic  phases  of 
social  groupings  that  cause  many  to  lapse  from 
the   local    organization,    nor    of    the    positive 


282  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

ravages  upon  religious  life  by  social  institutions 
sanctioned  by  the  State. 

In  this  chapter  I  have  chosen  to  lay  emphasis 
upon  what  I  consider  to  be  the  two  chief  social 
factors  in  the  spiritual  death  rate:  first,  the 
failure  of  the  responsible  groups  within  the 
Church  to  guard  the  sources  of  s])iritnal  life 
in  the  growing  and  unfolding  life  of  the  young 
people  already  within  her  grasp,  and,  second, 
the  failure  of  the  Church  to  guide  the  adult 
members  to  the  sources  of  power  that  will  give 
fiber  and  force  to  Christian  character. 


CHAPTER  XXIV 

CONSERVATION  OF  CHRISTIAN  RESOURCES 

There  is  no  subject  that  has  been  more  thor- 
oughly drilled  into  the  social  consciousness  of 
J  the  American  i3eoj)le  during  the  past  few  years 
than  that  of  the  conservation  of  our  national 
resources,  or  the  prevention  of  waste  in  the 
production  and  consumption  of  goods.  Also 
during  recent  years  this  idea  of  conservation 
has  been  given  a  more  vital  application  in  the 
appeal  for  conservation  of  the  human  resources 
of  our  country  in  the  prevention  of  child  labor, 
the  prevention  of  social  diseases,  the  avoidance 
of  accidents  in  industry,  and  the  prevention  of 
the  traffic  in  human  life  for  immoral  gain.  It 
is,  therefore,  in  harmony  with  these  great  ideas 
in  the  social  consciousness  of  to-day  that  I  wish 
to  present  some  of  the  facts  relating  to  the  need 
for  conservation  of  our  Christian  resources 
and  the  prevention  of  waste  in  the  work  of  the 
kingdom. 

Apart  from  the  world-problem  of  natural 
resources  available  for  the  good  of  mankind, 
our  national  resources  are  so  well  inventoried 
to-day  that  we  now  fully  recognize  that  the 
problem    of    conservation    and    prevention    of 

283 


284  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

waste  touches  ns  at  the  vital  point  of  our  in- 
come and  daily  expenditure  for  food,  fuel,  and 
shelter. 

The  problem  of  disease  is  one  that  belongs 
to  every  community  as  well  as  to  the  nation  at 
large.  The  death  rate  and  the  birth  rate  are 
sufficiently  well  tabulated  and  registered  that 
certain  phases  of  our  national  progress  and  of 
our  racial  advantage  in  the  struggle  of  civiliza- 
tion can  be  demonstrated  by  them.  The  ap- 
palling budget  of  human  life  paid  to  lust  and 
greed  in  industry,  and  in  the  reign  of  vice  in 
our  great  cities,  has  been  so  clearly  placed  be- 
fore the  Parliaments  of  other  nations,  and  be- 
fore our  own  Congress,  that  no  wise  statesman 
can  be  longer  indifferent  to  or  inactive  in  the 
matter  of  reforms  needed. 

It  must  be  understood,  however,  at  the  out- 
set that  those  who  advocate  conservation  of 
resources  and  prevention  of  waste  have  no  in- 
tention of  interfering  with  the  i:)rogress  of  the 
nation,  with  the  expansion  of  legitimate  busi- 
ness, or  with  the  wholesome  and  worthy  use  of 
resources,  but,  on  the  contrary,  they  are  seek- 
ing to  increase  all  these.  So  with  those  who  are 
pointing  out  the  need  of  the  conservation  of  our 
Christian  resources  and  the  prevention  of  waste 
in  church  work;  they  do  not  deny  progress  on 
the  part  of  the  Church  as  a  whole,  but  thej'- 
would  show  how  the   Church  can  make  even 


CONSERVATION  OF  RESOURCES  285 

greater  jDrogress  if  our  Christian  resources 
shall  be  better  conserved  and  utilized,  and  the 
enormous  waste  in  ministering  to  the  spiritual 
needs  of  the  people  in  many  communities 
avoided,  and  the  released  resources  could  be 
directed  into  other  useful  channels  of  Christian 
service. 

The  Facts  in  the  Case 

1.  Conservation  of  our  Christian  domain,  or 
churched  territory:  Historically  viewed,  the 
hardest  mission  fields  at  home  and  abroad  to- 
day in  which  to  get  results  are  those  that  com- 
prise what  may  be  termed  our  lost  Christian 
domain ;  for  example,  the  Mohammedan  world, 
the  downtown  sections  of  our  great  cities,  and 
the  rural  districts,  to  say  nothing  of  certain 
fields  in  European  countries,  where  the  lack  of 
personal  consciousness  of  human  redemption 
is  so  prevalent  that  evangelism  of  the  New  Tes- 
tament type  is  imperatively  needed. 

The  territory  around  the  Mediterranean  that 
is  now  occupied  by  Mohammedanism  was  lost 
to  Christianity  largely  because  the  governments 
of  the  eastern  and  western  branches  of  the  old 
Roman  empire  and  the  new  Christian  regime 
had  not  been  fully  made  Christian  from  the 
viewpoint  of  the  simplest  interpretations  of  the 
social  teachings  of  Jesus  and  of  the  apostles, 
John  and  Paul.     If  the  Church  in  those  days 


286  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

had  ministered  to  the  whole  man,  body  and  soul, 
through  the  social  agencies  of  government  at  its 
command,  it  would  have  been  impossible  for 
such  a  new  cult  to  make  its  imperial  way 
throughout  all  that  region  of  Christian  terri- 
tory and  even  to  menace  the  very  existence 
of  Christian  civilization.  So  in  every  similar 
field,  not  so  clearly  defined  territorially,  where 
another  than  the  true  Christian  faith  has 
become  dominant,  it  has  been  either  a  narrow 
theology  or  an  even  narrower  range  of  service 
that  has  left  the  people  in  many  quarters  scat- 
tered and  distressed  as  sheep  not  having  a 
shepherd,  for  some  one  else  to  gather  or 
destroy. 

In  the  downtown  sections  of  some  of  our 
cities  we  are  returning  to  our  abandoned  tasks 
at  an  enormously  increased  expenditure  in  se- 
curing adequate  quarters  for  our  socialized 
churches,  and  with  a  handicap  of  workers  who 
have  not  been  trained  in  the  actual  field  where 
social  consciousness  and  conduct  count  for  more 
than  sermon  and  song,  especially  when  these 
are  taken  from  the  "barrel"  of  the  superan- 
nuate, or  the  ** trunk"  of  the  novitiate,  and  the 
discarded  hjinn  books  of  an  uptown  congre- 
gation. 

In  the  rural  districts  the  churches  are  losing 
ground,  not  always  because  of  the  diminishing 
population,  but  in  many  instances  because  of 


CONSERVATION  OF  RESOURCES  2ST 

the  Church's  lack  of  adaptation  in  method  and 
character  of  service  adequate  to  meet  the  needs 
of  population  change  in  type  or  in  social  status. 

2.  Our  resources  in  the  young  life  of  the 
multitudes  who  go  through  our  Sunday  schools 
and  are  baptized  into  the  Christian  faith,  who 
slip  away  from  us  during  the  period  of  ado- 
lescence because  the  methods  in  presenting  our 
message  make  no  appeal  to  their  new  conscious- 
ness, nor  protect  them  by  social  ties  from  the 
maelstrom  of  the  city  streets  and  the  lure  of 
halls  where  passion  masters  reason. 

"We  have  as  yet  secured  no  adequate  statis- 
tics as  to  the  numbers  of  the  unchurched  who 
have  been  actually  within  the  grasp  of  the 
Church  in  the  Sunday  schools  or  in  other  re- 
ligious organizations,  but  there  is  a  settled  con- 
viction everywhere  among  Christian  workers 
that  the  numbers  of  such  are  very  great.  Some 
say  that  four  out  of  every  five  of  the  more  than 
ten  thousand  juvenile  delinquents  who  have 
passed  through  the  courts  in  recent  years  and 
have  been  put  in  charge  of  the  probation  officers 
in  the  city  of  New  York,  have  been  at  some  time 
in  vital  relation  to  the  churches  of  Protestant- 
ism and  Eoman  Catholicism,  or  the  Jewish 
synagogue. 

A  distinguished  member  of  the  Methodist 
denomination,  who  has  spent  the  most  of  his 
active  ministry  in  city  mission  work  in  New 


288  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEEK 

York,  told  me  some  time  ago  that  from  personal 
investigation  of  hundreds  of  cases  he  was  con- 
vinced that  four  out  of  every  five  of  the  men 
and  women  rescued  in  the  Bowery  missions 
were  at  some  time  in  their  early  life  vitally  con- 
nected with  the  Church  or  Sunday  school,  and 
he  further  added  that  the  same  could  be  said 
of  the  prisoners  in  our  reformatories  and  jails 
all  over  the  country. 

3.  Our  resources  in  men  who  are  members  of 
the  Church  and  congregation  but  who  have  not 
j^et  been  given  a  man's  job  in  church  work.  Our 
notions  of  church  work  have  been  so  confined 
in  some  places  to  the  service  that  a  man  could 
render  inside  the  church  building  by  simply  at- 
tending or  leading  a  ''service"  that  actually 
thousands  of  able  men  in  every  denomination 
within  our  cities  have  been  given  no  adequate 
task  within  the  kingdom  of  God.  They  are 
often  anxious  to  do  something,  but,  like  those 
who  stood  involuntarily  idle  in  the  market  place 
in  Jesus 's  day,  they  can  truthfully  say  to  the 
modern  master  of  men  as  he  asks  why  they  are 
idle,  ''No  man  hath  hired  us." 

4.  Our  resources  in  buildings  that  are  used 
but  one  or  two  days  in  the  week,  if  at  all, 
for  the  real  work  of  the  kingdom  of  God  among 
men.  I  have  in  mind  now  one  of  our  great  in- 
dustrial centers  in  the  East,  with  a  population 
of  over  three  hundred  thousand,  where,  in  the 


CONSERVATION  OF  RESOURCES  289 

most  populous  center,  there  are  within  a  radius 
of  half  a  mile  seven  Methodist  churches  whose 
auditoriums  are  open  only  parts  of  one  day  in 
the  week,  and  some  other  room  or  rooms  only 
one  or  two  more  evenings  in  the  week,  and  with 
the  exception  of  one  church,  the  congregations 
of  the  whole  number  could  be  gotten  comfort- 
ably into  the  largest  one  Sunday  evenings,  and 
there  would  still  be  left  ample  room  in  the 
**amen  corner"  for  all  special  visitors.  Now, 
in  looking  up  the  statistics  in  the  Minutes  of 
the  Conference  in  which  this  city  is  located,  I 
discovered  that  the  estimated  property  value 
of  these  seven  churches,  including  five  parson- 
ages situated  near  the  church  buildings,  aggre- 
gates more  than  half  a  million  dollars  ($523,- 
000),  and  the  salaries  paid  to  the  seven  pastors 
during  the  last  Conference  year^  amounted  to 
$13,000.  Observe  that  I  have  not  mentioned  the 
cost  of  lighting,  heating,  janitors'  fees,  music, 
repairs,  and  other  expenses.  The  number  of 
members  reported  for  the  seven  was  only  2,437, 
and  the  total  number  of  probationers  fifty-six; 
the  number  of  Sunday  school  scholars,  1,792. 

In  that  same  city,  but  in  another  section  far 
removed  from  the  center  above  described,  is 
one  Methodist  church  with  a  property,  includ- 
ing parsonage,  estimated  at  $105,000,  paying  its 
pastor  the  sum  of  $3,000,  and  reporting  a  mem- 

»  April,  1909-1910. 


290  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

bership  of  1,215,  with  forty-one  probationers 
and  927  scholars  in  the  Sunday  school,  with  110 
teachers.  Here  is  one  church  ministering  to 
half  as  many  people  at  about  one  fourth  of  the 
cost  of  the  seven.  Now,  it  is  only  a  matter  of 
common  business  sense  to  arrive  at  the  con- 
clusion that  there  is  need  in  that  city  of  con- 
servation of  resources  and  prevention  of  waste. 
And,  to  make  it  more  apparent,  we  need  but  to 
mention  the  fact  that  within  the  same  territory 
of  those  same  Methodist  churches  there  are 
about  the  same  number  of  other  churches  of 
different  denominations,  with  whom  the  Meth- 
odists affiliate  and  exchange  pulpits  and  mem- 
bers on  occasion. 

5.  Our  resources  in  our  Protestant  neighbors 
who  could  help  us  harvest  our  fields,  or  could  be 
spared,  or  could  spare  us,  to  harvest  other  fields 
where  the  harvest  is  indeed  plenteous  and  the 
laborers  are  few.  And  you  will  recall  that  Jesus 
made  this  statement  and  the  appeal  for  more 
laborers  with  reference  to  the  home  field.  In 
Vermont  and  other  New  England  States  the 
work  of  conservation  and  prevention  of  waste 
has  already  begun  to  take  place,  according  to 
a  recent  i:»ublication  of  the  Vermont  Interde- 
nominational Commission.  This  need  is  also 
made  strikingly  evident  in  a  report  of  Dr.  A.  H. 
Collins,  of  the  Des  Moines  Conference,  on  his 
studies  of  the  conditions  in  the  rural  communi- 


CONSERVATION  OF  RESOURCES  291 

ties  of  the  Creston  District,  embracing  a  terri- 
tory of  3,000  square  miles  and  100,000  popu- 
lation. In  this  territory  there  are  at  present 
279  churches  of  the  Protestant  denominations, 
one  for  every  360  people.  Sixty-two  of  these 
have  gone  out  of  commission  in  recent  years, 
either  through  the  lack  of  the  support  of  a  min- 
ister or  by  voluntary  union  with  other  churches. 
Eighty-seven  of  the  remaining  217  are  Meth- 
odist, and  this  advantage  of  Methodism  in  hold- 
ing the  field  has  been  attributed  to  the  useful- 
ness of  the  local  preachers.* 

6.  The  prevention  of  waste  through  lapses 
after  conversion,  or  the  reduction  of  the  spir- 
itual death  rate.  We  are  all  aware  of  the  fact 
that,  apart  from  the  enormous  waste  through 
the  period  of  adolescence,  we  have  a  large  num- 
ber of  persons  dropping  out  of  our  churches 
whom  the  Methodists  call  ''backsliders";  these 
aggregate  as  m.any,  if  not  more  in  some  cases, 
as  the  number  we  hold  after  revival  efforts. 
And,  furthermore,  the  vast  numbers  who  are 
lost  through  ''removal  without  letters,"  and 
are  never  recovered  from  the  vast  multitudes 
in  the  great  tenement  and  apartment  house  dis- 
tricts in  our  large  cities,  and  in  the  suburban 
communities,  not  to  mention  the  many  who 
lapse  through  indifference  or  because  of  their 


>  See  Central  Christian  Advocate,  November  24,   1909,  p.  6,   "A 
Valuable  Study  in  Rural  Religion." 


292  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

interest  in  some  other  social  organization  in 
which  they  find  a  stronger  and  sometimes  a 
more  congenial  comradeship. 

7.  Conservation  of  our  opportunities  for  so- 
cial leadership.^  The  opportunities  for  leader- 
ship in  the  modern  social  movement  are  the 
points  of  strategic  interest  for  the  Church  to- 
daj  if  it  holies  ever  to  master  this  movement, 
for,  after  all,  when  we  come  to  study  the  essence 
of  the  modern  social  movement  we  find  its  real 
motive  power  lies  in  the  neglected  interests  of 
humanity  that  had  a  large  place  of  emphasis  in 
the  program  of  Jesus.  Socialism,  at  heart,  is 
but  the  organized  consciousness  of  people  in  the 
struggle  with  poverty;  the  passion  for  social 
justice  is  at  the  foundation  of  the  labor  move- 
ment; the  appreciation  of  life  and  health  is  at 
the  basis  of  modern  philanthropy  and  charity, 
represented  in  all  their  attempts  at  social 
prophylaxis. 

8.  Conservation  of  our  resources  in  educa- 
tional institutions  and  those  factors  that  meet 
the  recreative  and  aesthetic  demands  of  human 
nature.  Most  of  these  were  founded  under 
Christian  auspices,  but  there  is  serious  doubt 
in  many  quarters  whether  we  shall  be  able  to 
conserve  their  influence  as  such,  and  in  so  far 
as  some  of  them  are  concerned,  like  the  theater, 
that  used  to  be  a  Christian  institution,  there 

•  For  a  fuller  discussion  see  Chapter  X. 


CONSERVATION  OF  RESOURCES  293 

seems  to  be  little  hope  expressed  of  ever  re- 
claiming it  from  the  paganism  into  which  in 
most  countries  it  has  degenerated.  Even  the 
Passion  Play  at  Oberammergau,  with  its  inter- 
vening decade  of  criticism  and  preparation, 
does  not  prove  to  be  a  hopeful  exception. 

Our  task  seems  to  be  clearly  defined  with 
regard  to  these  mighty  social  forces,  and  that 
is  to  dominate  them  with  the  Christian  con- 
sciousness, while  admitting  the  natural  social 
differentiation  that  must  necessarily  take  place 
with  the  social  process  with  which  the  kingdom 
of  God  on  earth  is  not  at  variance. 

What  Shall  We  Do? 

In  view  of  the  facts  with  which  we  are  all 
more  or  less  familiar,  and  with  the  conviction 
aroused  that  something  more  than  we  are  now 
undertaking  should  be  done,  the  question  of 
what  to  do  is  the  most  natural  one,  and  how  to 
do  it  is  even  more  important. 

Now,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  we  learn  how  to  do 
things  usually  by  observing  how  somebody  else 
does  the  same  thing  we  are  expected  to  do,  or 
something  like  it.  So  that  the  question  of 
method,  or  i3rogram,  is  simply  one  of  adapta- 
tion, imitation,  or  readjustment. 

It  may  be  safely  said  that  we  have  not  as  yet 
many  successful  examples  of  conservation  of 
resources  and  prevention  of  waste,  on  a  large 


294  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

scale,  to  observe.  We  have  just  begun  to  or- 
ganize for  it  in  the  nation,  and  in  industry,  and 
in  child-saving,  and  in  the  prevention  of  dis- 
eases and  crimes;  so,  as  religious  workers,  we 
are  to  keep  awake  to  the  need  and  get  into  the 
movement  with  the  rest,  and  win  in  this  race 
where  there  is  no  rivalry  but  the  haste  to  save 
life. 

1.  In  the  first  place,  we  must  study  our 
i^roblem  of  conservation  and  prevention.  We 
must  get  the  facts  before  the  people  in  an  in- 
telligent way,  and  I  mean  by  that  the  facts  as 
they  may  apply  at  the  crossroads,  or  on  the 
village  streets,  or  in  the  town  or  city,  as  well 
as  those  greater  things  that  have  to  do  with 
the  nation  and  with  world-wide  humanity.  We 
must  insist  upon  intelligent  social  diagnosis  be- 
fore applying  our  social  remedies.  This  is  be- 
ing done  in  many  places  already  by  the  various 
denominations  through  groups  representing  the 
movement  for  social  service.  It  needs,  how- 
ever, to  be  broadened  and  intensified. 

2.  There  must  be  developed  a  new  tj^pe  of 
minister,  or  religious  worker,  whom  I  name  the 
social  engineer,  who  is  to  make  this  work  of 
conservation  and  prevention  his  chief  business, 
under  the  direction  of  the  pastor  in  charge  or 
the  district  superintendent,  and  in  many  cases 
he  must  be  the  preacher  himself:  a  social  en- 
gineer for  Sunday-school  children  who  under- 


CONSERVATION  OF  RESOURCES  295 

stands  the  psychologj^  of  the  adolescent  and 
knows  the  social  forces  which  dominate  the 
thinking  and  the  conduct  of  young  people;  a 
social  engineer  for  the  men  of  the  Church  who 
have  no  work  to  do  in  many  cases  worthy  of  a 
man  of  strength — one  who  knows  the  city  and 
its  needs  and  can  relate  the  men  and  women 
of  the  Church  and  community  to  the  civic  life 
of  the  town  or  city.  We  need  another  type  of 
social  engineer  for  the  country  problem,  who 
will  be  able  to  direct  the  social  forces  of  a  whole 
county  and  relate  them  to  the  best  interests  of 
the  State  and  nation. 

Another  type  of  engineer  is  needed,  who  will 
be  able  to  deal  intelligently  with  the  foreigners 
in  the  villages  and  towns  and  the  great  colonies 
of  them  in  our  large  cities. 

In  other  words,  we  need  a  new  type  of  local 
preacher,  who  does  not  have  to  dress  like  a 
preacher,  or  have  orders  and  accept  calls  to 
preach  elsewhere;  a  man  who  knows  the  value 
of  social  machinery  and  knows  how  to  run  it, 
and  stays  on  the  job  all  the  time.  Our  theo- 
logical schools  ought  to  train  such  men. 

3.  We  must  insist  on  keeping  the  ecclesiastical 
carpetbaggers  out  of  administrative  offices  in 
the  fields  of  spiritual  conquest.  This  does  not 
apply  to  the  higher  offices  alone,  but  to  the  less 
responsible  positions  in  the  local  church  com- 
munity.    We  have  suffered  greatly  in  church 


296  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

work  by  allowing  people  to  hold  office  because 
they  desired  the  honor  rather  than  a  place  to 
serve  with  efficiency,  while  others  more  capable 
and  yet  more  modest  were  allowed  to  remain 
unused  in  these  important  tasks  of  the  kingdom. 

4.  We  must  place  supreme  emphasis  upon 
preventive  salvation,  so  that  no  allurements  of 
the  old  environment  will  be  able  to  break  the 
social  bond  of  Christian  fellowship  that  should 
keep  together  all  the  members  of  the  household 
of  faith.  This  must  be  done  especially  with 
reference  to  the  young  people  of  the  Sunday 
schools  in  the  great  cities  where  the  parents 
are  not  members  of  the  church,  and  whose  so- 
cial customs  are  ofttimes  alien  to  the  life  of 
the  true  Christian  young  man  or  woman  in 
America. 

5.  We  must  learn  to  cooperate  by  organized 
effort  with  all  the  social  forces  of  the  com- 
munity that  have  a  like  purpose  with  ourselves, 
and  not  insist  too  strongly  upon  our  method  or 
even  upon  agreement  in  the  details  of  working 
our  plan,  but,  rather,  place  emphasis  upon 
organization  in  mass  effort  to  overthrow  the 
organized  powers  of  evil,  having  always  a  su- 
preme confidence  in  the  integrity  of  human 
nature,  that  it  will  finally  respond  to  our  appeal 
and  take  on  the  highest  forms  of  expression  in 
character  that  is  to  be  the  test  of  citizenship  in 
the  kingdom  of  our  God  on  this  earth. 


CHAPTER  XXV 

THE  SOCIAL  EMPHASIS  IN  MODERN  EDUCATION 

At  a  meeting  of  the  Department  of  Superin- 
tendents of  the  National  Educational  Associa- 
tion, held  in  Chicago  more  than  a  year  ago, 
a  distinguished  educator  made  the  following 
statement:  "Civilization  is  running  short  of 
men  who  know  and  can  do";  and  he  said  this 
notwithstanding  the  fact  that  we  had  in  the 
secondary  schools  of  our  country  at  that  time 
over  800,000  boys  and  girls  pursuing  a  four 
years '  course,  and  in  our  colleges  and  universi- 
ties over  125,000  men  and  women  pursuing  an 
additional  four  years'  course  to  fit  them  for 
modern  social  leadership.  Senator  Elihu  Eoot 
said,  in  an  address  at  Albany,  New  York,  when 
tendered  a  reception  by  that  body,  that  the  tasks 
of  government  are  becoming  so  stupendous  it 
is  a  serious  question  whether  we  can  find  men 
capable  of  performing  them. 

At  a  conference  on  the  Country  Church  called 
by  the  International  Committee  of  the  Young 
Men's  Christian  Association,  in  New  York,  it 
was  stated  by  one  of  their  able  secretaries  that 
they  found  it  difi&cult  to  secure  sufficient  young 
men  who  were  capable  of  organizing  and  con- 

297 


298  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

ducting  the  social  tasks  of  the  country  work. 
And  it  was  the  consensus  of  opinion  of  a  dis- 
tinguished group  of  educators  from  colleges  of 
agriculture,  theological  seminaries,  universities, 
and  men  of  alBFairs  in  home-missionary  and 
church  federation  work  in  the  rural  communi- 
ties, and  superintendents  of  the  county  schools, 
that  the  problem  of  the  uplift  of  the  rural  life 
of  America  depends  upon  the  kind  of  trained 
social  leadership  we  can  put  in  the  field. 

There  are  socialized  churches  in  all  our  great 
cities  to-day  that  demand  pastors  and  workers 
of  the  highest  type  of  efficiency,  and  fields  yet 
unmanned  that  must  be  filled,  if  at  all,  by  the 
products  of  our  educational  institutions.  So 
with  the  problems  of  social  engineering  in  busi- 
ness and  industrial  life,  in  government,  legis- 
lation, and  in  organized  charity  and  philan- 
thropy, in  public  sanitation,  hygiene,  and 
medical  practice;  all  are  demanding  as  never 
before  the  highest  degree  of  social  efficiency 
in  the  individual.  So,  then,  we  may  conclude 
that  the  emphasis  in  modern  education  must 
necessarily  be  placed  upon  those  factors  in  the 
educational  process  that  result  in  the  social- 
ization of  human  life  in  consciousness  and 
activity. 

The  real  emphasis  in  modern  education  is  not 
in  teaching  merely  a  subject,  or  bringing  to  the 
mind  of  the  student  a  certain  amount  of  subject 


SOCIAL  EMPHASIS  IN  EDUCATION       299 

matter,  but,  rather,  in  the  teaching  of  a  person 
■ — the  development  and  quickening  of  the 
powers  of  personality  so  that  the  individual 
will  use  the  facts  of  knowledge.  In  other  words, 
education  means  the  leading  out  of  the  student 
into  all  the  fields  and  avenues  of  knowledge, 
the  unfoldment  of  all  his  normal  instincts  into 
the  full  development  of  all  their  corresponding 
faculties  and  powers  as  they  are  manifest  in 
the  fully  developed  man.  To  state  it  in  still 
another  way :  real  education  means  the  relating 
of  the  individual  to  life  as  expressed  in  society 
—the  socializing  of  the  individual. 

The  educator  must  understand  what  society 
really  is,  and  what  society  does  for  the  indi- 
\ddual  who  is  the  product  of  society  through 
heredity  and  environment  plus  that  power  of 
self-initiative  expressed  in  what  we  call  free- 
dom of  pei'sonality.  He  must  understand  the 
effect  of  society  upon  human  nature,  and  must 
know  something  of  what  the  individual  is  capa- 
ble when  his  social  nature  is  fully  developed. 

The  teacher  should  have  a  view  of  the  whole 
social  field  in  order  to  understand  where  the 
educational  emphasis  of  our  day  must  be  placed, 
and  must  know  what  the  social  aim  of  educa- 
tion is  with  respect  to  the  social  units  which 
are  capable  of  instruction.  He  should  have  a 
clear  conception  of  the  social  mind  and  of  the 
social  consciousness,  and  should  know  the  fac- 


300  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

tors  mtliin  reach  for  their  developmentj  edu- 
cation, and  enlightenment. 

The  educator  should  know  also  what  is  the 
function  of  social  organization,  and  the  origin 
of  those  institutions  and  organizations  that  aim 
to  meet  the  needs  of  human  life,  whether  they 
be  immediately  felt  and  understood  or  more 
remotely  discerned. 

There  is  also  involved  in  this  point  of  em- 
phasis in  modern  education  the  sociological  in- 
terpretation of  the  great  divisions  of  the  educa- 
tional subject-matter,  such  as  history,  language, 
law,  religion,  morals,  and  government,  as  well 
as  the  study  of  human  progress  and  the  nonns 
by  which  it  may  be  measured. 

Why  We  Need  This  Change  of  Emphasis 

In  former  years  the  emphasis  in  our  educa- 
tional system  was  placed  upon  the  making  of 
every  pupil  a  breadwinner — a  self-supporting 
citizen  when  he  became  able  on  leaving  the 
school  to  take  up  the  active  work  of  a  producer 
of  economic  values  by  labor,  whether  of  the 
hand  in  manual  toil,  or  of  the  intellect  as  a 
master-workman  in  managing  and  directing 
others,  or  as  an  owner  and  operator,  or  a 
director  of  corporate  capital. 

But  as  a  result  of  this  emphasis — and  no  one 
will  doubt  the  efficiency  of  American  enter- 
prise— ^we  now  find  that  many  have  in  the  proc- 


SOCIAL  EMPHASIS  IN  EDUCATION       301 

ess  of  winning  their  bread  not  scrupled  to  take 
the  bread  of  another;  or,  in  other  words,  they 
have  not  been  governed  in  their  wealth-getting 
by  a  strong,  healthful,  moral  sentiment  that  has 
prevented  them  from  taking  undue  advantage 
of  their  fellows  when  opportunity  for  graft  was 
presented. 

In  the  last  few  years  our  country  has  been 
awakened  to  the  astonishing  amount  of,  and  the 
widespread  effects  of,  unrighteous  and  unlaw- 
ful, and  even  grossly  immoral,  dealings  of  some 
men  highly  educated  and  holding  positions  of 
trust  both  in  public  and  private  life.  I  need 
hardly  mention  for  illustration  the  frauds  un- 
earthed in  the  postal  service,  the  land  frauds  in 
connection  with  the  disposal  of  the  public  do- 
main, the  insurance  scandals  by  some  of  the 
largest  and  most  prosperous  companies  in  the 
world,  the  evils  of  legislative  assemblies  through 
bribes  of  the  lobbyists,  municipal  crimes  of  the 
boodlers  and  grafters  in  our  great  cities  all  over 
the  country,  the  revelations  of  adulterations 
through  the  investigations  by  the  Pure  Food 
Commission,  the  evils  of  rebating,  fraudulent 
weighing,  and  other  evils  brought  to  light  by 
the  Interstate  Commerce  Commission,  the  Cus- 
toms Department  at  New  York,  and  the  Depart- 
ment of  Justice.  All  these  have  resulted  not 
because  we  as  a  nation  lacked  education,  but  in 
spite  of  it.    May  we,  therefore,  not  rightly  as- 


302  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

sume  that  these  things  have  been  possible  in 
large  measure  because  the  emphasis  in  our  edu- 
cational process  has  been  upon  the  individual 
interest,  to  the  neglect  of  the  larger  social  in- 
terest which  is  not  antagonistic  to  the  best 
interests  of  the  individual,  because  it  seeks  to 
relate  him  to  life  in  such  a  way  that  he  will 
receive  infinitely  more  of  good  from  society  as 
he  seeks  to  serve  society  by  carrying  on  the 
business  in  which  he  is  engaged  with  a  con- 
sciousness of  other  men's  needs,  rights,  and 
privileges  as  well  as  of  his  own. 

We  have  in  many  instances  been  taught  ex- 
tremely false  notions  of  economics  in  business 
life — that  ^'competition  is  the  life  of  trade," 
when,  as  a  matter  of  common  observation,  if 
pushed  too  far,  competition  is  the  death  of 
trade.  The  only  legitimate  competition  which 
really  helps  trade  is  that  of  industrial  and  com- 
mercial efiiciency  which  seeks  to  better  the 
service  to  the  public — the  consumer — by  facili- 
ties and  courtesies  in  delivery,  and  by  improv- 
ing the  quality  of  the  commodities.  We  need  to 
emphasize  everywhere  this  fact  that  to-day  a 
man  can  succeed  not  by  destroying  his  fellows 
but,  rather,  by  serving  them. 

The  need  for  social  emphasis  in  modern  edu- 
cation may  be  expressed,  therefore,  from  sev- 
eral points  of  view. 

First,  from  the  fact  of  the  changes  in  modern 


SOCIAL  EMPHASIS  IN  EDUCATION       303 

society  as  a  result  of  the  phenomenal  growth  of 
the  nation  both  in  population  and  in  prestige — 
change  in  the  character  of  our  population  from 
an  agricultural  to  an  industrial  people,  from  a 
predominantly  rural  to  an  urban  population. 
The  growth  of  our  towns  and  cities  has  made 
the  town-meeting  as  a  socializer  of  the  com- 
munity impracticable,  hence  our  city  govern- 
ments have  changed,  our  methods  of  business 
and  of  industry  have  been  revolutionized. 
There  is  no  longer  a  chance  for  the  individual 
to  learn  much  of  social  life  while  at  his  em- 
ployment. The  newspaper  has  superseded  the 
store  and  the  shop  as  disseminators  of  the  news. 
The  saloon,  with  its  accompanying  evils,  has 
followed  in  the  wake  of  the  tenement  and  the 
lodging-house — systems  of  housing  that  have 
modified  the  family  life  of  the  nation.  Even  the 
Church,  which  has  always  played  such  an  im- 
portant part  as  a  socializer  of  the  people,  does 
not  reach  the  vast  hordes  of  our  city  population, 
nor  is  it  meeting  in  any  adequate  way  the  social 
problem  of  the  rural  population  of  to-day. 

Second,  from  the  viewpoint  of  the  change  in 
the  character  of  the  population  movements  of 
the  present.  In  former  years  the  bulk  of  migra- 
tion within  the  national  domain  was  by  family 
groups,  which  set  up  the  socializing  agencies 
for  the  needs  of  the  new  community  life  of  the 
frontiers  wherever  they  went — the  church,  the 


304  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

school,  the  store  and  shop,  and  the  family  house- 
hold. To-day,  however,  the  largest  number  of 
migrations  is  by  individuals  who  must  put  up 
with  the  lodging-house,  where  true  family  life 
is  unknown  and  impossible,  and  with  the  chang- 
ing social  order  of  an  industrial  community. 
This  lack  of  family  life  and  this  change  in  so- 
cial environment  slacken  the  ties  of  religious 
and  family  restraint,  weaken  other  social  bonds, 
and  make  the  creation  of  others  more  difficult 
both  for  the  school,  the  church,  and  for  the  com- 
munity government. 

Third,  from  the  viewpoint  of  the  changed  con- 
ditions of  our  industrial  life.  The  market  to- 
day is  for  many  commodities  world-wide,  and 
conunerce  is  no  longer  bound  by  the  borders  of 
the  State  or  hedged  up  by  the  frontiers  of  a 
nation.  This  condition  leads  to  serious  prob- 
lems of  interstate  commerce  and  of  interna- 
tional relations.  The  Drago  doctrine  is  an  illus- 
tration of  this  change  in  international  com- 
merce, and  the  creation  of  an  interstate  com- 
merce commission  and  the  giving  to  it  of 
enlarged  powers  illustrates  this  point  with  re- 
spect to  commerce  and  trade  within  our  own 
country. 

Fourth,  from  the  fact  of  the  modem  move- 
ments toward  church  federation  from  fields 
where  there  has  been  interdenominational 
cleavage  and  sometimes  actual  religious  con- 


SOCIAL  EMPHASIS  IN  EDUCATION       305 

flict;  organized  inovements  for  the  mastery  of 
the  religious  problems  of  the  cities,  the  rural 
communities,  and  the  evangelization  of  the  mis- 
sion fields  of  the  world.  The  need  for  emphasis 
upon  distinctions  of  creed  and  content  of  be- 
liefs is  no  longer  apparent,  but,  rather,  the  need 
for  emphasis  upon  the  problems  of  service 
through  the  channels  of  religious  social  or- 
ganization. 

Fifth,  from  the  viewpoint  of  political  govern- 
ment and  legislation  there  is  need  for  emphasis 
upon  social  control  rather  than  upon  mere  ma- 
jority rule:  government  by  enlightened  public 
opinion  rather  than  by  a  political  boss  or  a 
group  of  ''vested  interests."  "We  should  secure 
legislation  after  intelligent  consideration  of  the 
needs  of  the  people  at  large  rather  than  at  the 
beck  and  will  of  a  politician  for  partisan  or  per- 
sonal ends.  There  is  increasing  need  for  men 
with  social  training  for  the  tasks  of  government 
and  legislation  who  are  willing  to  sacrifice  per- 
sonal gain  for  the  common  good.  There  is  need 
for  an  educated  public  service  to  meet  the 
challenge  of  an  aggressive  social  democracy 
which  may  have  its  place  as  a  counter-irritant 
in  a  monarchy  but  should  have  no  soil  in  which 
to  root  itself  in  a  free  republic  like  our  own. 

Sixth,  from  the  moral  viewpoint  we  have 
been  too  individualistic  in  our  ethics,  allowing 
the  individual  to  hide  behind  the  corporation 


306  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

and  then  denying  the  ethical  responsibilities  of 
the  group  of  which  he  is  a  member,  hence  ' '  Not 
guilty"  is  the  verdict  of  the  judge  or  jury  in 
most  cases.  We  need  to  push  our  ethical  prin- 
ciples of  moral  responsibility  to  the  wider 
group,  and  hold  all  the  factors  of  human  society 
which  possess  the  attributes  of  personality  to 
a  strict  accountability  to  the  demands  of  the 
moral  social  order. 

Seventh,  from  the  viewpoint  of  constructive 
and  preventive  philanthropy.  We  need  an  in- 
creasing number  of  trained  workers  for  the  vast 
fields  of  social  service  among  the  growing  multi- 
tudes of  the  dependent,  defective,  and  delin- 
quent classes  of  our  population.  We  have 
been  fumigating  the  patient  rather  than  the 
building  where  he  contracted  the  disease;  we 
have  been  improving  tenements  rather  than  the 
economic  system  that  made  the  slum  possible. 
We  have  been  fighting  tyi:)hoid  in  the  sick-cham- 
ber rather  than  by  controlling  the  watershed 
that  supplies  our  city  reservoir.  Social  educa- 
tion does  not  ignore  the  work  of  rescue,  but 
places  supreme  emphasis  upon  preventive  sal- 
vation. 

Eighth,  from  the  viewpoint  of  the  world  *s 
peace.  Kace  antagonism,  international  preju- 
dice, and  class  conflict  are  facts  of  modern 
civilization  that  must  be  reckoned  because  of 
the  costs  in  times  of  peace  for  the  contingencies 


SOCIAL  EMPHASIS  IN  EDUCATION       307 

of  war.  There  is  everywhere  evident  the  pas- 
sion for  peace  in  the  human  heart,  when  peace 
can  be  secured  with  social  justice.  It  is  the  task 
of  our  educational  system  to  make  war  with 
weapons  of  death  unnecessary  and  impossible 
because  all  responsible  social  factors  of  civili- 
zation may  learn  a  better  way. 

From  all  these  points  of  view  the  need  is 
great  for  the  social  emphasis  in  modern  educa- 
tion being  placed  in  all  our  educational  institu- 
tions upon  the  relating  of  the  student  to  the 
intricate  network  of  social  institutional  life  of 
this  age,  so  that  whether  he  stops  at  the  grades, 
or  at  the  end  of  the  secondary  school  course,  or 
with  the  college  diploma,  or  after  the  pursuit  of 
his  graduate  studies  in  some  specialty,  he  may 
at  every  stage  in  the  process  of  education  go  out 
with  some  fundamental  notion  of  what  society 
has  done,  is  doing,  and  may  yet  do  for  him ;  and 
he  should  go  also  with  some  definite  and  clear 
convictions  as  to  what  he  may  and  ought  to  do 
for  society. 

We  may  conclude,  therefore,  that  the  social 
emphasis  in  modern  education  is  to  be  placed 
upon  the  development  of  personality  in  social 
consciousness,  upon  the  efficiency  of  the  indi- 
vidual through  social  organization,  and  upon 
the  utilization  of  knowledge  and  skill  in  the 
fields  of  need  through  social  engineering. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 


309 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Addams,  Jane. — Twenty  Years  at  Hull  House.  Newer 
Ideals  of  Peace. 

Bacon. — Essays — On  Friendship. 

Bailey,  Wiluam  B. — Modern  Social  Conditions. 

Cabot. — Social  Service  and  the  Art  of  Healing. 

CooLEY,  Chables  H. — Human  Nature  and  the  Social  Order. 
Social  Organization.     Article  on  the  Social  Conscious- 
ness, Pub.  American  Sociological  Society,  Vol.   I,  pp. 
101,  190. 

Devine,  Edwaed  T. — Misery  and  Its  Causes. 

GiDDiNGS,  Feanklin  H. — Principles  of  Sociology. 

GuMPLOwiTz. — Der  Rasenkampf. 

Hegel. — Vorlesungen  uber  der  Philosophie  der  Geschichte. 

HiLLis,  Newell  Dwight. — Man's  Value  to  Society. 

Knopf,  S.  Adolphus. — Tuberculosis  a  Preventable  and  Cur- 
able Disease. 

Mayo-Smith. — Statistics  and  Sociology. 

MoTT,  John  R. — The  Future  Leadership  of  the  Church. 

Patten,  Simon  N. — The  New  Basis  of  Civilization. 

Ross,  Edwaed  A. — Sin  and  Society.  Latter  Day  Sinners 
and  Saints.    Social  Psychology. 

Rauschenbusch. — Christianity  and  the  Social  Crisis. 

Spencee,  Hebbeet. — Data  of  Ethics. 

Steong,  Josiah. — The  Challenge  of  the  City. 

ToLMAN. — Social  Engineering. 

Tippy. — The  Socialized  Church. 

Wabbasse,  James  P.,  M.D. — Medical  Sociology. 

WuNDT,   Wilhelm — Volkerpsychologie. 

Peeiodicals 

The  Social  Educational  Quaetebly,  1907. 

The  Ameeican  Jouenal  of  Sociology,  University  of  Chicago 
Press. 

The  Ameeican  Economic  Association  Quabtebly,  Cam- 
bridge, Massachusetts. 

311 


312  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 

Publications  of  the  Amebicax  Association  fob  Labor  Leg- 
islation, New  York  City. 

The  Sunday  School  Journal,  Eaton  &  Mains,  New  York. 

Methodist  Men,  Laymen's  Publishing  Company,  New  York, 
William  P.  Patterson,  Editor. 

The  Western  Christian  Advocate,  Cincinnati,  Ohio,  Levi 
Gilbert,  Editor. 

The  Survey,  New  York. 

,  Additional  Books  fob  Collateral  Reading 

Addams,  Jane. — Democracy  and  Social  Ethics,  1902. 

Blackmer,  Frank  W. — Elements  of  Sociology,  1905. 

Buck,  Winifred. — Theory  and  Practice  of  Boys'  Self-Gov- 
ernment  Clubs,  1906. 

Butterfield,  Kenyon  L. — Chapters  in  Rural  Progress,  1908. 
The  Country  Church  and  the  Rural  Problem,  1911. 

Chancellor,  William  E. — A  Theory  of  Motives,  Ideals, 
and  Values  in  Education,  1907. 

Commons,  John  R. — Races  and  Immigrants  in  America, 
1907. 

Dealey,  James  Quayle. — Sociology,  1909. 

Devine,  Edward  T. — Principles  of  Relief,  1904.  Misery  and 
Its  Causes,  1909. 

Ellwood,  Charles  A. — Sociology  and  Modern  Social  Prob- 
lems, 1910. 

Ferri,  Enrico. — Criminal  Sociology,  1896. 

Giddings,  Franklin  H. — Descriptive  and  Historical  So- 
ciology, 1906. 

Gladden,  Washington. — Social  Salvation,  1902. 

Hall,  Thomas  C. — Social  Solutions,  1910. 

Lee,  Joseph.^ — Constructive  and  Preventive  Philanthropy, 
1902. 

LeBon,  Gustave.— The  Crowd,  New  Edition,  1903. 

Mathews,  Shaileb. — The  Social  Teachings  of  Jesus,  1897. 
The  Church  and  the  Changing  Order,  1907. 

Morgan,  Lewis  H. — Ancient  Society,  1877. 

Morrow,  Prince  I. — Social  Diseases  and  Marriage,  1904. 

Peabody,  Francis  G. — Jesus  Christ  and  the  Social  Ques- 
tion, 1901.    The  Approach  to  the  Social  Problem,  1910. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  313 

Ross,  Edwabd  a. — Foundations  of  Sociology,  1905.  Social 
Control,  1906. 

Small,  Albion  W. — General  Sociology,  1905.  The  Meaning 
of  Social  Science,  1911. 

Stone,  Alfred  H. — Studies  in  the  American  Race  Problem, 
1908. 

Strong,  Josiah. — Religious  Movements  for  Social  Better- 
ment, 1900. 

Sumner,  W.  G. — ^Folkways,  1907. 

Tarde,  Gabriel. —  Laws  of  Imitation,  Translated  by  E.  C. 
Parsons,  1903.  Social  Laws,  Translated  by  H.  C.  War- 
ren, 1899. 

Tenney,  Edward  Payson. — Contrasts  in  Social  Progress, 
1907. 

Thomas,  W.  I. — Sex  and  Society,  1907. 

Travis,  Thomas. — The  Young  Malefactor,  1908. 

Vincent,  George  E. — The  Social  Mind  in  Education,  1897. 

Ward,  Lester  F. — Psychic  Factors  of  Civilization,  1893. 
Pure  Sociology,  1903,    Applied  Sociology,  1906. 

Ward,  Harry  F. — Social  Ministry,  1910. 

Westermark,  E. — The  History  of  Human  Marriage,  1891. 
Origin  and  Growth  of  the  Moral  Ideas.  Two  Vols., 
1906-8. 

Willson,  Robert  N. — The  American  Boy  and  the  Social 
Evil,  1905. 


INDEX 


315 


INDEX 


Ability,  its  lack  a  Church  peril,    Boy  problem,  146;  the  bad,  166; 


See  Industrial  Acci- 


preventive  salvation  the  solu- 
tion of,  271,  272;  social  causes 
of  the,  262-272 


Capital — Organized,  conflict  of, 
xii 


be 


129 

Accidents 
dents 

Administration,   the  Church  to 
develop  leadership  in,  124 

Adolescence,   great  cost   in   re- 
claiming losses  of,   207;   loss  Caste,  51 
to  the  Sunday  school  in  pe-  Causes     of    conditions     to 
riod  of,   131;  Sunday  school  studied,  153 
loss  to  be  prevented,  177,  178,  Central     Labor   Union,    church 
209,  210;  work  of  a  Sunday  delegates  to,  243,  244 
school    teacher    during,    229  Character,  of  an  eflScient  indi- 
230                                              '  vidual,  60-62 

Adult    Bible   class,    in    service,  Charity.    See  Organized  Charity. 

279,  280;  a  noneffective,  171,  Evil    of  indiscriminate,    163> 

172  164;  socialized,  157-168 

Affinity,   not  a   true   basis   for  Childhood,  neglect  of,  a  cause  of 

friendship,  116  spiritual  death,  275-278 

Afflicted,  the,   and  church    phi-  Child-labor,  110 

lanthropy,  156,  164-166  Children,  cruelty  to,  17 

Anti-Saloon  work,  37  Child-saving,  230 

Association  of  presence  and  ac-  Child-welfare,  17,  18 


tmty,  15,  16 

Banquets  and  social  organiza- 
tion, 25 

Bible-training  classes  for  social 
work,  259,  260 

Blindness,  caused  by  infection  in 
infancy,  164,  165;  prevented, 
203,  204 

Blood  relationship  a  social  fac- 
tor, 44 


Church,  the,  and  industrial  prob- 
lems to  be  related,  179,  180; 
and  municipal  reform,  179; 
and  the  workingman,  238- 
250;  carrying  it  to  the  people, 
252-255;  educating  for  social 
efficiency,  76-80;  how  it  can 
help  the  labor  movement,  244- 
248;  how  the  labor  movement 
can  help  it,  249,  250;  modern 
social  movement  not  mastered 


317 


318 


THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 


by,  132,  133;  neglect  of  the 
boy,  269-271;  nonattendance 
at  129-131;  peril  of,  128-133; 
present  attitude  toward  the 
labor  movement,  241-244; 
spiritual  death  rate  of,  131, 
132;  to  develop  leadership  in 
city  government,  123,  124; 
to  develop  leadership  in  legis- 
lation and  administration 
124;  to  develop  leadership  in 
organized  charity,  126,  127; 
to  develop  leadership  in  or- 
ganized labor,  125,  126;  to 
discover  powers  to  the  in- 
dividual, 78;  what  can  it  do 
for  social  salvation?  235-237 

Church  buildings,  conserved  as  a 
Christian  resource,  288-290 

Church  federation,  better  than 
competition,  xvi;  means 
change  of  emphasis,  304,  305 ; 
team  work  in,  178,  179 

Church  membership,  unorgan- 
ized, causes  spiritual  death, 
278-282 

Church  unity,  international  les- 
sons and,  9 

Church  work  and  the  social  set- 
tlement, 258-261;  change  in 
methods  of,  xvi;  cooperation 
in,  23;  friction  in,  xx;  illustra- 
tion of  religious  engineering, 
33,  34;  lack  of  social  engineers 
in,  XX 

Cities,  congestion  of,  xi;  causes 
of,  187-190;  fact  of,  183-186; 
relief  of,  196,  197;  results  of, 
186,  187;  sanitation  of,  xii 


City,   the,   an  attractive  force, 
187-190;  high  rents  in,   188, 
189;  not  a  menace,  182,  183 
City  government,  the  Church  to 

be  a  leader  in,  123,  124 
City  problem,  the,  181-193 
Civic  pride,  developed,  89,  90 
Class-consciousness,    highly    de- 
veloped, xi 
Class  distinctions,  40,  41 
Classification  of  social  machin- 
ery, 29;  social,  38-41;  varie- 
ties of  social,  41-43 
Class  legislation,  73,  74 
Commercial  life,  changed,  304 
Community,  neglect  of  the  boy, 
268,  269;  team  work,  169-180 
Commuters,  181 
Companionships  of  the  boy,  207 
Competition,  cooperation  better 
than,  XV,  xvi;  in  social  serv- 
ice, 24,  25;  a  wrong  concep- 
tion, 302 
Comte,    August,    on    progress, 

100 
Conditions  of  living  vary,  104; 

to  be  studied,  150 

Conflict  of  labor  and  capital,  xii 

Congestion  of  population,  causes 

of,  187-190;  fact  of,  183-186; 

relief  of,  190-193;  results  of, 

186,  187 

Congregational  Church  and  the 

labor  movement,  242 
Consciousness  of  kind,  21 
Consecration  to  public  welfare, 

20 
Conservation    of    child    life    ia 
church  work,  287;    of  Chris- 


INDEX 


319 


tian  resources,  283-296;  of 
Christian  resources  in  educa- 
tion, 292,  293;  of  church 
buildings,  288-290;  of  oppor- 
tunities for  social  leadership, 
292;  of  resources  through 
other  denominations,  290, 
291;  of  workers  in  church 
work,  288;  what  shall  we  do? 
293-296 

Constancy,  an  element  of  friend- 
ship, 118 

Conversion,  waste  after,  291 

Cooley,  Professor,  on  social 
mind,  82 

Cooperation,  better  than  com- 
petition, xvi;  by  organized 
effort,  296;  in  settlement 
work,  256,  257;  in  social  serv- 
ice for  the  commimity,  169- 
180 

Country  church,  how  to  main- 
tain its  efficiency,  108,  109 

Crime  caused  by  congestion  of 
population,  186;  prevented, 
201-203 

Deaconess  work,  enlarged,  259 
Death  rate,  spiritual,   131-133; 

causes  should  be  sought,  132; 

neglect  of  childhood  a  cause, 

275-278;  social  causes  of,  273, 

274 
Defective   classes,    environment 

and,  158 
Definition  of  social  progress,  99- 

102;  of  social  sinning,  218-220 
Diphtheria,  spread  of,  223 
Disease  caused  by  congestion  of 


population,  186,  187;  preven- 
tion of,  194-198;  problem  of, 
284 

Divinity  of  man  the  true  basis 
of  friendship,  117,  118 

Divorce  and  its  causes,  109 

Downtown  churches,  how  to 
maintain  the,  108,  286 

Drunkenness,  prevention  of, 
198-200;  study  of  the  causes 
of,  200 

Ecclesiastical  carpetbaggers,  not 
to  be  employed,  295,  296 

Economist,  idea  of  progress,  94 

Education,  change  of  emphasis 
needed,  300-307;  conserva- 
tion of  Christian  resources  in, 
292;  emphasis  on  personahty, 
299,  300;  progress  measured, 
97,  98;  social  emphasis  in 
modern,  297-307;  true,  70-72 

Educational  agencies  socialized, 
89 

Educational  institutions,  social 
efficiency  in,  76 

Educator,  the,  demands  prog- 
ress, 96;  idea  of  progress,  94 

Efficiency,  the  Church  educating 
for,  76-80;  an  educational 
problem,  70-72;  esteem  neces- 
sary to,  67;  knowledge  neces- 
sary for,  xxii;  lack  of,  in  an 
adult  Bible  class,  171,  172; 
of  the  country  church  main- 
tained, 108,  109;  of  individ- 
uals, 58-81;  of  individuals, 
hard  to  estimate,  65,  66 ;  phys- 
ical  endurance   necessary  to. 


320 


THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 


67,  68;  social — in  educational 
institutions,  76;  in  govern- 
ment, 73;  in  industry,  74-76; 
in  leadership,  58-81;  in  legis- 
lation, 73;  in  organized  char- 
ity, 75,  76;  in  philanthropy, 
75,  76;  in  religious  activity, 
75;  utiUzed,  72-76;  Sunday 
schools  a  training  ground  for, 
77;  waste  due  to  lack  of,  ix 

EUmination  of  mischievous  ele- 
ments, 154 

Employers,  the  church  and,  245- 
247;  Habihty  for  accidents, 
160,  161 

Environment  and  defective 
classes,  158;  regeneration  of, 
210,  211 

Equality,  does  not  exist,  38,  39 

Esteem,  necessary  to  efficiency, 
67 

Ethics,  progress  measured,  98; 
too  individuahstic,  305,  306 

Eugenics,  155 

EvUs  caused  by  individuals,  11; 
not  intended,  10,  11 

Evolution,  not  a  true  basis  for 
friendship,  116,  117 

Factories,  encouraged  to  build 
in  suburbs,  192 

Family  disintegration,  114,  115; 
neglect  of  the  boy,  265-268;  re- 
lation to  social  diseases,  109, 110 

Foreigners,  race  affinity  in  the 
cities,  189;  rural  lack  of  sjrm- 
pathy  with,  189,  190 

Frankness,  an  element  of  friend- 
ship, 119 


Frauds,  discovered,  301,  302 
Friendship,  as  a  social  force,  112- 
121;  basis  of,  115-118;  char- 
acteristics of  true,  118-120- 
Christian,  120,  121 
Function  of  social  organization, 
19 

GambUng,  legislation  on,  231; 
suppressed,  8,  9 

Giddings,  Franklin  H.,  on  prog- 
ress, 101;  on  social  mind,  81 

Golden  Age,  the,  92 

Golden  Rule,  the  basis  of  social 
justice,  240 

Gompers,  Samuel,  on  the  liquor 
traffic,  162 

Government,  social  efficiency  in, 
73 

Great  man  in  society,  the,  59, 
62-64 

Health.     See  Public  Health;  of 

school  children,  xii,  xiii 
Hebrew  people,  idea  of  progress, 

93 
Hegel,  on  progress,  99,  100 
Heredity  and  environment,  158; 
defectiveness  and,  165;  guard- 
ing the  sources  of  life,  212,  213 
Heroism,  a  social  factor,  46 
Hospitals,  outdoor  patients,  xiii 
team  work  for  social  service 
in,  175,  176;  wanting  in  rural 
communities,  189 
Hudson-Fulton  celebration,  130, 

131 
Human  nature,  integrity  of,  355 
Humanity,  progress  of,  102 


INDEX 


321 


Imitation,  the  law  in  settlement 
work,  256 

Individual,  ability  to  express  in 
activities,  65;  difficult  to  esti- 
mate efficiency  of,  65,  66; 
efficiency  an  educational  prob- 
lem, 70-72;  the  product  of 
society,  63;  progress,  101,  102 

Industrial  accidents,  a  cause  of 
poverty,  160,  161 

Industrial  problems,  the  Church 
to  be  related  to,  179,  180 

Industry,  facilities  for,  a  cause 
of  congestion,  189;  social  effi- 
ciency in,  74-76 

Infant  mortality,  due  to  diseased 
milk,  139 

Insanity  and  isolation,  64;  pre- 
vented, 204 

Institutions,  methods  to  be 
studied,  152,  153 

Insurance  frauds,  231 

Integrity  of  human  nature,  255 

Isolation  and  insanity,  64;  and 
suicide,  64 

Jesus  Christ  growing  in  social 
estimate,  65;  idea  of  neigh bor- 
liness,  139;  idea  of  progress,  93 

Juvenile  delinquency,  263-265; 
team  work  against,  176,  177 

Juvenile  delinquents  and  the 
laws,  159;  stealing  junk,  146 

Knowledge,  necessary  for  effi- 
ciency, xxii 

Labor.    See  Organized  Labor 
Labor  movement,  present  atti- 


tude of  the  Church  toward  the, 
241-244 

Law,  obsolete,  73,  74 

Leadership,  conservation  of  op- 
portunities for  social,  292; 
diversities  in,  35;  in  church 
work,  ii;  in  social  service,  25; 
social,  122-127;  social  effi- 
ciency in,  58-81;  a  social  fac- 
tor, 46 

Legislation  against  social  evil, 
230-232;  the  Church  to  de- 
velop leadership  in,  124;  social 
efficiency  in,  73 

Lewis,  Thomas  L.,  on  the  liquor 
traffic,  162,  163 

Lincoln,  Abraham,  activities  of, 
68 

Liquor  traffic,  110,  111;  a  cause 
of  poverty,  161-163;  organ- 
ized character  of,  231 

Living,  standards  of,  110 

Majority  rule,  social  control  to 
be  emphasized  not,  305 

Marriage  of  the  unfit  to  be  pre- 
vented, 165 

Methodist  Episcopal  Church  and 
the  labor  movement,  242,  243; 
General  Conference  on  social 
problems,  105-107 

Methodist  Federation  for  Social 
Service,  list  of  problems,  107- 
111 

Methods  called  for  in  social 
service,  145;  observation  of 
others,  146-148;  of  commu- 
nity team  work,  169-180;  of 
institutions  to  be  studied,  151, 


322 


THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEEE 


152;  preventive,  of  moral  re- 
form, xiv;  to  change  with 
changing  social  needs,  261;  to 
be  studied,  152 

Migration,  now  by  individuals, 
303,  304 

Milk,  diseased,  139 

Minister,  the,  his  task  to-day, 
x^^iii-xx;  needs  a  social  en- 
gineer, XX,  xxi 

Mitchell,  John,  on  the  liquor 
traffic,  162 

Model  tenements,  in  New  York 
city,  184,  185 

Mohammedanism,  conquered 
Christian  territory,  285,  286 

Monroe,  James  P.,  on  social 
education,  70-72 

Moral  reform,  preventive  meth- 
ods, xiv 

Municipal  reform,  the  Church 
and, 179 

MutuaUsm  and  sin,  214 

Nation,  progress  of  a,  102 

National  Bureau  for  the  Con- 
servation of  Child-Life,  18, 
230 

Needs  of  society  and  social  or- 
ganization, 14—17;  for  dealing 
with  social  ills  growing,  206 

Neighborhness,  idea  of  Jesus, 
139;  social  settlements  and 
good,  257,  258 

New  York  city,  congestion  of 
population  in,  183-186;  ju- 
venile crime  in,  263;  preva- 
lence of  venereal  disease  in, 
186,  187 


Norms  of  progress  dependent  on 
the  kind  of  achievement,  92- 
99 

Obedience,  a  test  of  friendship, 
119 

Occupation,  sin  and  the  lack  of, 
167 

Ocean  Grove  Life  Guards,  208, 
209 

Organized  charity,  social  effi- 
ciency in,  75,  76 

Organized  labor,  18;  change  in, 
XV,  xvi;  the  Church  may  fail 
to  lead,  133;  the  Chm-ch  to 
develop  leadership  in,  125, 
126;  claims  of,  110;  condi- 
tions should  be  studied,  151; 
in  conflict,  xii 

Parable  of  the  good  Samaritan, 
139 

Pauperism,  prevention  of,  204, 
205 

Peace,  emphasis  on  the  world's, 
306,  307 

Peril  of  the  Church,  128-133; 
in  failure  to  attract  the  mul- 
titude, 129-131;  in  failure  to 
master  the  modern  social 
movement,  132,  133;  what  is 
the,  127 

Personality  the  basis  of  social 
settlement,  85;  ministry  of, 
255-258 

Philanthropy,  constructive  and 
preventive,  306;  the  poor  and 
the  Church,  157,  160-164; 
social  efficiency  in,  75,  76 


INDEX 


323 


Philosopher's  idea  of  progress, 
93 

Physical  factors  available  for 
the  indi\'idual,  69;  endurance 
necessary  to  efficiency,  67,  68 

Playgrounds,  results  of  the  es- 
tabUshment  of,  201,  202;  to 
be  provided,  177 

Poor,  the,  and  church  philan- 
thropy, 156,  160-164 

Population.  See  Congestion; 
movements,  303,  304 

Position,  a  social  factor,  45 

Poverty,  causes  of,  160-164 

Presbyterian  Church  and  the 
labor  movement,  242 

Prevention  in  social  engineering, 
194-205;  is  educational,  215- 
217;  method  of,  210-213;  of 
crime,  201-203;  of  defective 
classes,  203,  204;  of  disease, 
194-198;  of  drunkenness,  198- 
200;  of  pauperism,  204,  205; 
salvation  in,  206-208;  value 
of,  209,  210 

Preventive  work,  in  moral  re- 
form, xiv;  the  new  idea  of  so- 
cial service,  141-144 

Problems,  social,  107-111 

Profession,  a  social  factor,  45 

Protestant  Episcopal  Church 
and  the  labor  movement,  241, 
242 

PubUc  health,  team  work  for, 
174,  175;  prevention  in,  194- 
198 

Pubhc  opinion,  6-9 

Public  welfare,  consecration  to, 
20 


Pure  food  movement,  233,  234 
Purpose  of  social  organization,  19 

Quantity  not  a  measure  of 
progress,  95 

Race  affinity,  a  cause  of  city 
congestion,  189 

Race  prejudice,  109 

Rapid  transit,  its  lack  a  cause 
of  congestion,  188 

Rebuke  of  friendship,  119,  120 

ReUgion,  its  progress  measured, 
98 

Religious  activity,  social  effi- 
ciency in,  75 

Religious  social  engineer,  xviii- 
xxiii 

Resources,  conservation  of  Chris- 
tian, 283-296 

Responsibility  for  conditions,  to 
be  studied,  149,  150 

Revivals,  backsliders  after,  131 

Roosevelt,  Theodore,  activities 
of,  68 

Ross,  Professor,  on  sin  in  so- 
ciety, 221,  222,  225,  232 

Rural  church  problem,  286,  287, 
290,  291 

Rural  communities,  deficiencies 
of,  189,  190;  to  be  made  more 
attractive,  190-196 

Rural  problem,  leaders  needed 
for  the,  297,  298 

Sacrifice,  an  element  of  friend- 
ship, 119 

Saloon,  reasons  for  abolishing 
the,  198-200 


324  THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEEK 

Saloon  keepers,  to  be  punished  58;  aroused,  xiv;  implies  abil- 

for  infringement  of  law,  168  ity  to  make  use  of  ideas,  84; 

Salvation.    See  Social  Salvation;  meaning  and   value   of,   3-6; 

social  factors  in,  228-235  not    to    be   confounded   with 

Salvation — Preventive,  206-217;  social  mind,  83 

the  boy  problem  solved   by,  Social   control  and   reform,   12, 

271,    272;    educational,    215-  13;  not  majority  rule,  305 

217;    method    of,    210,    211;  Social  diseases   and  their  relar 

not    negative,    213-215;    su-  tion  to  the  family,  109,  110 

preme  emphasis  to  be  placed  Social  education.  111;  James  P. 

on,  296;  value  of,  209,  210  Monroe  on,  70-72 

Sanitation,  city,  xii  Social  efficiency  of  individuals, 

Service.      See    Social    Service;  58-81;  utilized,  72-76 

not  honor,  xxi  Social  emphasis  in  modern  edu- 

Settlement,  the  social,  251-261  cation,  297-307 

Sewage    disposal    and    typhoid  Social  engineer,  at  work,   134- 

fever,  175  307;   in   the   making,    1-133; 

Sin    and    mutualism,    214;    of  a  new  type  of  religious  worker 

society   against    the   individ-  needed,  294,  295;  why  needed? 

ual,  225-227;  social  conscious-  xi-xxiii 

nees  and,  xiv,  xv;  social  per-  Social  engineering,  prevention  in. 

spective    of,    221-225;    social  194-205;  preventive  salvation 

salvation  and  social,  218-237;  in,  206-217 

to   be   overcome   with   good,  Social  justice,  54;  Golden  Rule 

213  the  basis  of,  240 

Sinning,  the,  and    church  phi-  Social  leadership,  122-127 

lanthropy,  156,  166-168  Social    machinery,    28-33;    and 

Skill  a  social  factor,  46  social  engineering,  26-37;  clas- 

Slum,  the,  181  sification  of,  29 

Social  advantage,  factors  which  Social  mind,  81-89;  conviction 

give,  43-47  concerning  salvation,  20;  de- 
Social  barriers,  50-52  velopment  of,  84-86;  educa- 
Social  class-consciousness,  highly  tion  of,   86-91 ;  meaning  of, 

developed,  xi  81-85 

Social  classification,  38-41;  va-  Social    morals,    illustration    of 

rieties  of,  41— i3  teaching,  87,  88 

Social  cleavage,  48-50  Social  movement,  the,  233-235 

Social  conflict,  52-55  Social    organization,  xii,   14-25; 

Social  consciousness,  3-13,  37-  kinds  of,  21-23;  principles  of, 


INDEX 


325 


19-21;  reasons  for,  14-18; 
relation  of  one  to  others,  23 

Social  progress,  91-102;  defini- 
tions of,  99-102;  ideas  of,  92- 
95;  kinds  to  be  measured, 
97-99;  measured,  95-97 

Social  reform,  12,  13 

Social  salvation,  228-237;  fac- 
tors in,  228-235;  what  can 
the  Church  do  for?  235-237 

Social  service,  community  co- 
operation in,  169-180;  how 
to  work  in  the  fields  of,  145- 
148;  illustrations  of,  139-141; 
individual,  141-144;  meaning 
of,  137-144;  method  of,  xiii- 
XV ;  not  taken  seriously 
enough,  171;  specific  fields  of, 
148,  149;  study  of  the  fields 
of,  149-156 

Social  settlement,  the,  251-261; 
personality  and,  85,  86;  value 
of,  252-255 

Social  sinning,  against  the  indi- 
vidual, 225-227;  and  social 
salvation,  218-237;  definition 
of,  218-220;  of  one  group 
against  another,  227 

Social  studies,  103-111;  list  of 
specific  problems,  1 07-1 1 1 ; 
special  commission  on,  106, 
107;  specific,  105,  106 

Social  unity,  the  result  of  the 
modern  social  movement,  xvii 

Social  will,  10-12;  possibility  of 
the  development  of  the,  12 

SociaUzation  of  all  human  life, 
xiii,  xiv 

Society,  the  student  to  be  re- 


lated to  it  as  it  is,  87;  teaching 
what  it  is  or  is  not,  87 
Society   for  the   Prevention   of 

Cruelty  to  Children,  17,  203 
Sociological  progress  measured, 

98 
Sociologist,  idea  of  progress,  94 
Spencer,   Herbert,   on  progress, 

100,  101 
Statesman,  idea  of  progress,  95 
Stealing,  kinds  of,  232,  233 
Suicide  and  isolation,  64 
Sunday  school,  the,  and  church 
unity,  9;  and  public  opinion, 
8;  to  discover  powers  to  the 
individual,  78;  to  furnish  mo- 
tives,  79;  a  training  ground 
for  social  efficiency,  77 
Sunday    schools,    class    conflict 
and,  56-58;  education  of  the 
human  mind  in,  87;  for  social 
service,    24r-32;   loss  in  ado- 
lescent period,  131,  177,  178; 
a  noneffective  Bible  class,  171, 
172;  waste  in  social  service  of, 
28,    30;   work   of   teacher   in 
adolescent  period,  229,  230 
Sympathy,  aroused  by  study  of 
the  social  field,  154,  155 

Teaching  social  morals,  an  illus- 
tration, 87,  88;  what  society 
is  or  is  not,  87 

Team  work,  for  the  community, 
169-180 

Tenements,  causes  of  over- 
crowding, 187-190;  coopera- 
tive, 193;  to  be  improved  by 
law,  191,  192 


326 


THE  SOCIAL  ENGINEER 


Theological  seminaries  may  train 

settlement  workers,  259 
Tramp  problem,  the,  205 
Transmigration   of   souls  not  a 

true  basis  for  friendship,  116 
Tuberculosis,  prevention  of,  196; 

team  work  against,  172-174 
Typhoid    fever,    a    preventable 

disease,  174,  175,  196 

Unchurched,  the,  287,  288 

Unemployed,  the,  xi 

United  Hebrew  Charities,  work 

of,  in  1901-1907,  193 
UtiUzation   of  social   efficiency, 

72-76 

Venereal  disease,  prevalence  in 
New  York  city,  186,  187,  197; 
prevention  of,  197 

"Vicarious  service,  a  social  factor, 
46,  47 


Waste,  due  to  lack  of  eflBcient 

men,  ix ;  of  Christian  resources. 

283-296;  through  lapses  after 

conversion,  291,  292 
Wealth,     as     a    social     factor, 

44,  45;  its  progress  measured, 

97 
Weltanschauung  of  labor,  240 
Wesley,     John,      activities     of, 

68 
White-slave  traflac,  breaking  up 

the,  174 
Workingmen,    the    Church    and 

the,  238-250;  present  attitude 

of    the    Church    toward    the, 

241-244 
Wundt,     Professor,     on     social 

mind,  82 

Yoimg  Men's  Christian  Associa- 
tion and  the  labor  movement, 
.     243 


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